Never forever

It had never occurred to me that Margo would die. Not for real. Pretty silly thing to say for a someone in her mid-forties. Sure I knew that everyone died. Just not Margo (or me, or my children for that matter).

She'd been there since my birth. Why wouldn't she be there forever?

I last kissed her as she was lying in a coma at the Dunkirk hospital, two weeks before she died. One kiss on the forehead and a "goodbye", as if we were meant to meet again. And we did, sort of. I flew back for the funeral, saw her one last time at the viewing. She didn't quite look like herself: her fingers were strangely flat, her hair brushed the wrong way, her cheeks were cold and hard, her jewelry gone.

I couldn't eat much for weeks afterwards: oranges and soup, soup and oranges, and then more oranges. I called it "the funeral diet". It took me a whole year to cry. A year! There seemed to be no end to the pain.

But it's been almost three years since she's died and I am no longer crying. Years ago, I met a woman at work who'd lost her five-year old son to leukemia. "You cry until you get yourself sick with grief," she had said. "And then one day, someone says something funny and you start laughing. And believe me, that part is even stranger than all the crying. How can we be wired to get over the loss of the people we love? Just like that? When my son died, I thought I would cry forever. It doesn't work that way."

So Margo didn't last forever and neither did my grief for her. I wish I could say I feel her by my side at all times, but I don't. I conjure memories of her, and talk about her to whoever will listen, and I write this blog. Bust she has stopped visiting my dreams. Sometimes I'm afraid I will never cry for her again.

Would she forgive me for that?