Scribbled at 2:04 a.m.,

As the dream won’t let me sleep.

Because somehow, 30 years later, I’m back there again.

Watching the performance.

The funeral.

The fanfare.

And feeling the same quiet scream in my chest.

He died.

And I knew it.

I felt it.

But in the dream—and in real life—there was a song, swaying, a show.

Young boys collecting coins (odd, right?).

A calm mother.

People were moving around me like nothing had shattered.

It felt like theater.

And I was the only one who didn’t get the script.

I was the girl in shock,

in awe,

and in awe of my own silence.

No one matched the gravity I felt.

Not then.

Not in the dream.

And maybe not for years after.

So, what is this dream telling me?

What does it want?

Maybe it’s not about reliving it.

Maybe it’s about reclaiming it.

My truth of that dreadful day—without the performance.

Without the choreography of grief that made everyone else comfortable.

Maybe I’m finally naming something that was never said but always felt.

Maybe this is about validating the deep injustice of feeling invisible inside my own heartbreak.

Maybe at 51, I am now ready to hold that younger version of me and whisper,

“You weren’t wrong.

You weren’t too much.

You just felt what others couldn’t face.”

This dream didn’t come to haunt me.

It came to hand me something.

A mirror.

A pen.

A way back to myself.

I write.

Scribbling my way out of silence.

Word by word.

Feeling by feeling.

No more performance.

Just my truth.

I keep writing—

because there’s a numbness that never left.

A kind of going-through-the-motions that’s dressed itself up well over the years—

smiles at the right times, laughs at the right jokes,

gets the job done.

But underneath the mask,

it’s like I’ve been living in grayscale.

And people don’t see it.

They see the competence, the resilience, the woman who keeps it all afloat.

They don’t see the velvet chair I sink into when no one’s watching,

where I sit in the shadows,

watching my own life like a play I never quite got cast in.

How does one live in technicolor

when the darkness has been so thick for so long?

Sometimes, I feel the stage light catch me—

a moment of joy, of beauty, of connection—

and for a fleeting second, it pierces the dark.

But then it fades again.

And I’m back in the velvet chair,

back in the hush,

back in the space between who I was before and who I had to become.

People say without saying, “That was years ago. Move on.”

They often say it gently, or with edginess, or even—with pity in their empty eyes.

But what they don’t understand is this:

I can’t.

It’s not a choice.

It never was.

My heart won’t let me.

It holds that little girl close—

the one who lost the one person who made my world feel safe,

and never really got him or that feeling back.

She’s still there.

Still stunned.

Still wondering how joy is supposed to feel the same

when the ground underneath her never stopped shaking.

Maybe I’ll never “get over it.”

Maybe that’s not the point.

Maybe the point is learning to live with it.

To carry the grief with tenderness.

To stop trying to erase the ache,

and instead, ask what it wants me to remember.

And throughout the years—

there have been moments.

Bright, breathing, real moments

that pulled me out of the velvet chair,

out of the darkened, dank theater,

and back into life.

My sons—

my two most extraordinary awakenings.

They cracked open my numbness

with their smiles and sticky fingers,

wide eyes,

and unexpected laughter.

They remind me of him—

in the way they move,

the quiet way they see me,

the way they love without needing permission.

It’s in them I remember what it felt like

to be loved like that.

To be known without needing to perform.

And my hubs—

his patience,

his steadiness,

his willingness to love me even when I don’t always know how to mirror it back.

There’s a quiet heroism in his loyalty to me.

In staying when the joy doesn’t come easy.

In holding space, when I run and disappear into myself.

Then there’s nature—

those holy moments are when I am surrounded by something older, wilder, bigger than me, and my grief.

The mountains, the ocean, the birds, and the wind threading through trees.

That’s when perspective finds me again,

reminding me that I, too, am temporary.

That one day, I’ll be gone.

And maybe, just maybe, someone will sit in their own velvet chair

thinking of me,

feeling both the weight of loss and the gift of love that came before it.

These technicolor moments—

they don’t erase the grief.

But they occupy it.

They soften its edges.

They make it breathable.

They remind me that my pain did not steal everything.

That love still lives within.

Even when it arrives in quiet ways.

Maybe I won’t ever fully move on.

But I am learning how to move with it.

With the ache.

With the light.

With the knowing

that feeling this much—

even still—

means I’m still alive.