infinity is breaking
why is an infinite grief still, evermore?
There is so much to be said, spoken through — maybe even talked about within grief.
Something I learned early on, and too early on.
Is that so much of this…grief, in itself, is infinite.
Even so, there is more of an infinity lying there within.
There, appearing alongside its every shape, our every form, and most importantly.
As everyone of us, those cavities — the shared moments, next to the ones so uniquely tied to ourselves that it’s almost alienating to go through it and be left as the tale, afterwards…alone.
When I first imagined grief, all I knew was of the caricature — a crying widow, the sudden illness, the routine health check turned septic.
Then suddenly, you see it unfold.
In my timelines, verbatim, comedic irony, the throws of being at the mercy of the next shoe dropping.
Now there is tonight, and I think about grief in a different tense than before. Given now that the years have racked up into the several,
I fixate on — ‘loss’.
Today I thought about infinity, and how much in everything we do—even the glances towards that oak tree standing in my yard, has this finite value.
Then too, let’s say ourselves are gifted the privilege to make it to our 80th year.
29220 days.
A larger number than how many glances I were to get at this tree but still, finite. Ticking, and only moving closer towards the next, smaller number.
See, I know only of that number in 80 years by using a calculator.
Not a thing exists to calculate the last glance you give our oak tree—the one that stood before our childhood home was built, when will that be?
That number lies between the days in which you have left, and your present self.
The point being that your own ignorance is the only metric value anything can hold.
A tree, your friend, a parent…yourself.
Dies—and shrouded by that ignorance you are, it has already begun.
Grief as just the acting catalyst for noticing the finite, the de-conception—the loss.
I get angry at the world now when I realize it wasn’t grief that I held my contempt towards, but infiniteness.
Grief unlocking the loss, and now everything is just a number depreciating.
I get angry at the world then when I think on the number of times I get to say,
‘I love you’, and how that is just another finite, running out.
I get sad when I remember all the many several years it’s been since I last saw death, not for the death itself.
But the times missed and changed, curiosity on what would’ve been.
Are they happy right now, in that parallel universe I know runs alongside? Or, sad?
Disappointed in the state of what we both bring upon ourselves, and what is brought down towards us with no clause in our volition.
While I know with some, those finite times I was able to say I love you with response, has run out.
If there is anything that grief, then gives.
It is in how much a love can grow in absence.
For I am not upset at the passing of time, or in a number ticking down, be it seconds, or spoken forms in a last acting breath.
The accrual of love from it all, the number that goes up, remains till infinity.
“for all I know,
my time here is in infinity until nought,
that this ignorance to perceive an end,
may only exist as my head lays down in slumber.
so, blessed are the days to wake up with wickedness, and beasts in myself to slay.
for that is growth to be taken,
still are the moments of love,
speaking it in,
and
out of cadence, conversations with no meaning behind them.
as there tends not to be an intention to why she may die in her sleep,
the lack of reasoning behind sharing love, may be the larger finite, turning into infinity.”
-alice
"when you're on top of me it feels like infinity just might break"
