09/24/2025
✨ Aujourd’hui, vous croiserez sans doute quelqu’un en deuil.
Quelqu’un qui porte en lui le fantôme de l’amour.
Ce fantôme est lourd : il rend les choses simples difficiles,
et les choses difficiles parfois insupportables.
Parfois tout juste arrivé, parfois familier,
il finit toujours par trouver sa place.
Et pour certains, il devient une partie d’eux-mêmes,
marchant à leurs côtés, main dans la main :
l’amour et le deuil inséparables.
Car ce poids invisible, on ne le porte pas seulement
sur les épaules ou dans les bras.
On le porte toujours,
toujours,
dans le cœur.
- Becky Hemsley
You’ll walk past someone who’s grieving today; someone who is carrying the ghost of love.
And the ghost of love is heavy: it makes the easy things difficult, and the difficult things unbearable. It weighs on every breath, every step and every turn that we take. It can make the every-day exhausting.
For some people, the ghost is a new acquaintance, and they carry it on their shoulders.
Unknown and unfamiliar, it is finding its place. Figuring out how to settle here forever.
For some it is an old friend, and they carry it in their arms.
It’s almost pleasant and overly-familiar, but it can still grow heavy; and that’s when it starts to ache.
And for some, it has become a part of who they are.
It walks beside them; love hand-in-hand with grief.
You’ll walk past someone who’s grieving today; someone weighed down by an invisible heaviness that they carry.
It’s new and it’s old,
and then it’s old that becomes new all over again in a heartbeat.
Because, no matter how long they have known it,
that is truly where they carry it.
Not on their shoulders.
Not in their arms.
But always,
always
in their heart.
*****
Becky Hemsley 2024
Beautiful artwork by Shawna Erback
This poem is from my most recent grief and loss collection, I Missed You Quietly Today.
(This link is an affiliate link which means I earn commission to help offset printing costs at no extra cost to you): https://amzn.to/4mQV6TD
