When you lose someone you love, they leave a big gaping void in your soul. It doesn’t matter how long ago it’s been or how many other friends, lovers and wonderful sights and smells you cram into that space in an attempt to fill that void.

It just leaves you with an aching, a deeper sense of loss and grief at the realization that your lost loved one is not there to enjoy these new experiences with you. You feel guilty for living, for leaving them behind. And even if you should move on from the initial pain and slowly try to live again, flashes and little spots of time continues to haunt you.

An errant scent, a song on the radio-even the sound of certain words or laughter can bring them back with such intensity that your entire insides clench and moan in agony. You get used to living with the constant pressure just beyond your eyes and your vocal cords, always at the ready to cry at a moment’s notice.

But life doesn’t care that you’re hurting. It continues on in it’s frightening pace, refusing to pause or stop for even a brief reprieve. So you trudge on, breathless and try to tackle all the stresses of living while trying to hold your oozing heart together.

And eventually, like all wounds, it starts to heal. But sometimes (and more often than not), the splintered, bleeding mass starts to get infected-the wound in your soul starts to fester and you become feverish and ill.

Sometimes, you don’t want the wound to even heal. You wonder if it does heal, would your love and memory of said love one also fade? So you pick at the wound, rip away at the scabs and scratch at the tender flesh struggling to epithelialize from within.

It will leave a scar, a terrible, sunken in and discolored matrix of faded memories and raw feelings, not quite skin but not quite broken. And it will break down again with the slightest altercation. They say pressure ulcer stage IVs are never truly healed, and you marvel at the truth of those words.

They say you will always remember your first pronouncement.

Reality is, you remember every pronouncement. Some may not be as vivid as others but it’s never something you can forget, something that demands to be remembered. It’s a terrible thing to be forgotten, and it’s a terrible burden to bear but its one that you have taken knowingly.