Love Letters to Ghosts

Babe,

It’s been almost 2 years now.

Two years since that day.

That earth shattering, life altering afternoon when my worst nightmare became a reality and our lives were torn off the perfect little track we had so carefully laid out.

The day that you died.

Every single day since then, my heart aches for you. To see you, hear you, touch you.

I’d never known deep grief before but now, I couldn’t know it more. I know it so well, like I knew you, differently than anyone else.

Knowing you changed me, and your death has profoundly shifted me even more. Someone I reached out to in the early days told me this, “Death has given me many gifts, albeit fucked up gifts, but gifts nonetheless. It has given me a connection to life like I never had before.”

I didn’t get it then, but I see it now.

I am left today in complete awestruck wonderment of the human spirit.

In awe of us being able to endure trauma beyond belief, anguish, loss, devastation, crippling grief, yet still be able to find the strength to get up, and keep going.

And not just go through the motions of life numb, even though sometimes it’s easier.

Instead, life is now sharper, clearer, more harsh, yet at the same time more soft.

I can see beauty in places I’d never noticed before…light, and love in the world doesn’t truly cease to exist, even though it feels like it some of these days without you.

I’m in awe of the pain I feel in my heart. A specific type of pain that I’ve realized I never really want to go away because, for me, it’s proof that the love I have for you was so real that it really cannot die.

And finally I’m in awe of the connection I still have with you, I can’t explain it but I know it’s there. Proof that some part of us can never be erased by space, by time, in this world or the next.

You see, my love, there’s something beautifully trans formative that happens when you hit rock bottom.

The person I am today is so different than the person you last kissed goodbye that spring morning two years ago.

It’s hard to explain - all you need to know is that the heart and soul of that girl is still the same, there’s just a different version yet this new variation of me you’d love just as much.

It’s a person who’s grown and adapted. Someone who’s learned to slow down the sweet moments of life and learned to just be.

Be present, be joyful and be grateful that I got to know and love someone as special as you.

Death is something we don’t like to talk about. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, even though there are millions of us out there who have felt the weight of grief and have tried to make sense of it ourselves.

I guess part of us thinks that maybe if we don’t acknowledge the loss, perhaps it won’t hurt as bad.

But I’ve come to realize that it’s okay to acknowledge the suffering, and a lot of the time that’s where true healing begins.

You lived your dreams every single day you had here babe, and I know you’re doing the same now wherever you are.

You’ve always been and forever will be, my inspiration.

Love,

Caily

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