You Google, you search, you find

and then print it off

Checklist for

how to arrange a funeral

it will say you call this person,

 you do this, and you arrange this,

and you pay this,

go through it

very linearly

You can go through it

one by one,

tick, tick, tick, tick, tick

But at the end, there should be a

‘now you just go and figure it out

on your own’ box

And where’s the  ‘And now live’ box?

 

He wishes there was a recipe

that he could follow

You do three months of this,

and you do two months of this,

and you do a month of this.

Getting grief  wrong

Having a one-size-fits-all doesn't work

But at the same time, he wishes

that there was a one-size-fits-all,

because then he could understand,

and then he could do it,

and it would be done.

 

Because within a framework,

he feels safer

He knows the boundaries,

he understands when it starts,

when it ends

Thinking that it ends

It doesn’t end

It doesn't fucking end

It's never going to fucking end.

 

 I ask myself,

‘How long do I have to grieve for?’

There is no timeline, my heart

is still learning to beat

without the other person’s.

 

Two opposing feelings,

do not have to fit together,

It doesn't have to be a conflict.

We are given a one-size-fits-all

way of grieving

People say, ‘oh you do this,

then you do this, and you do this,

and you do this, and it's... ‘ already patterned.

 

People boil it down to,

‘oh, you're going to feel sad,

and you're going to feel less sad,

and then, you're going to feel less sad,

and  finally, one day, you're going to feel okay’

It's never linear,

it’s all kinds of feelings

that are not talked about.