two
Josephine wished she was back home.
Then again, she always did.
It was unbearable to be in society, where people expected one to be the perfect daughter of a viscount.
To look comfortable in that slip of a dress, to act elegant and ladylike, and not as if she would prefer to be called ‘Jo’ and practice sword-playing with Laurie.
She fought to hide the pain from her face. She tried to think of being in her little room, writing furiously into the small hours of the night by the window, freezing, watching the moon set.
This will be over soon, she coaxed herself. I will be comfortable, out of this dress and corset, and writing at my desk within a few hours.
And yet, the thought persisted:
‘Everyone I love is going to leave me.’
She shouldn’t have thought it. Not yet. Everyone would eventually leave her, but they hadn’t yet. She had still so much to lose, even though she felt she had already lost everyone.
She hadn’t.
But somehow she had a premonition that she would.
“Everyone I love is going to leave me,”
she whispered.
She shouldn’t have said it—not yet. Somehow, she sensed that it was premature, to say the least.
Dear Beth,
Grief is a thing made of tears. It has a clear beginning and no end. It feeds on time. It has wings, but it drags you into the depths of the ocean like a boulder. It is an animal most foul, that grows if it hides, and gnashes its teeth if it does not.
Grief cannot be killed. It will not fade with the passage of time; it will distort memories; it will steal joy from the past, present and future; it will not be intimidated by speaking of it. It is unbeatable.
But it is the one thing that’s left in the place you occupied.
So I embrace it like a friend. I intend to live my life in it, as one lives in a comfortable room even though it’s too cold in the winter and too warm in the spring, and the roof is leaking tears at inopportune times, like a sister’s wedding. I have no other choice, but even so, I choose it.
I choose to live in grief. And that is the only way I know of unfurling those great, white wings of it. Grief weighs me down, but I have wings. For what is grief but love lost? I can fly.
Eternally,
Your sister