What Sarah Said

what sarah said // death cab for cutie

It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds

But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all

But I’m thinking of what Sarah said 

that “Love is watching someone die”

According to Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages of grief:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

I think, seven years after my dad's death, that I’ve reached the acceptance stage. And that terrifies me. What if I forget his voice, even though I have the last voicemails he ever left recorded safely on my hard drive? What if I forget how he smelled, even though I’ve selfishly hoarded his clothing and refused to wash it so that it still smells like iron and salt and lake water? What if I forget his face, or his hair, or his hands, even though I wear each of them as my own, every day? Every pockmark, every curl, every blunt tipped finger a perfect copy of his just made softer, smaller, more feminine.

In a few years when Naveen and I are ready to start a family, how will I ever be able to explain to my children what they have lost? How can I make them understand  this brilliant person they will never get to meet? Stories and pictures aren’t enough.

I accept it, I do, because I don’t have a choice in the matter. But seven years on my heart is still broken.