Living with a Phantom Limb

They say that when people first lose a limb, they can still feel it. It still hurts, they still try to use it. They call it having a "Phantom Limb”.

I think that this is what losing a person is like. It’s like having a phantom limb.

You beckon them over to "come see this!", you come home at the end of the day to tell them about how much you hate going to work, you pick up the phone to call them when you're happy, sad, mad, or somewhere in between. Until you realize that they're not there.

And each time you realize it, it hurts just as bad as it did the first time, all over again.

Only an arm, I could lose. It's the people I care about the most that I can't live without.

When someone you love disappears, it's like the light goes dim, and you're in the shadows. You try to do what people tell you: put one foot in front of the other; keep looking up; give yourself over to the seconds and minutes and hours...

But always there's that glimmer of light --- that way of living you once knew --- sort of faded and smoky like the crescent moon on a winter's night when the air is full of ice and clouds, but still there, hanging just over your head.

Leaving? Well, that was easy.

It was everything else that was so damn hard.