Grief does not arrive all at once. It wears you down slowly, stripping away certainty and strength until you are left standing, breathing only because it is expected of you.
That morning at Greenwood Memorial Park, beneath a clear blue sky, I believed I had reached the deepest point of loss a person could endure. I was wrong.
Sunlight reflected off polished headstones and carefully trimmed grass, a sharp contrast to the heaviness in my chest. White lilies and roses filled the air with their scent as nearly two hundred mourners stood behind me in silence. I held a folded eulogy in trembling hands, unable to get past the first sentence without breaking.
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