Leticia Coombe

I've heard it's like the ocean, at first you cannot breathe because the waves are so big and scary. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive. Your head keeps going underwater but after a while the tide goes back out and you can stand on your feet again briefly. The waves of grief still hit, and they knock you off your feet, but the tide gets less and less scary. As for the waves, you learn to tolerate them and after a while they become a part of life. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of waves from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks. Because you've loved