Grief doesn’t exist in a singular moment.

It exists in a multitude of tenses.

It is at once in the now, where you know all that you know, that you never wanted to know.

It is in the before, where you naively trusted in the surety of what you had.

And it is in the crushing devastation of the moment of loss. The implosion. The unravelling. The everything that followed.

It is also in the spirals of other timelines. The endless possibilities. What would have, could have, should have been. If only.

All of that exists at once. In a moment. Where I am now. Thinking of Mike, forever 35 on what is coming up to what would have been his 38^th birthday.

It doesn’t get easier. I just learn to live with it. Like moss covering an old plane that crashed in the forest. Or barnacles on a ship wreck. Life grows around it. It is part of my foundation.