Grief.

Grief is an oft written about subject. Kübler Ross has an entire book on what grief is like, the stages it goes through, what to expect. It was all summed up nicely in a cartoon of a giraffe stuck in quicksand. In my time as an oncology nurse I learned quickly what my role was for my patient and their family from diagnosis through death. 

That's a "suppose to" kind of grief.  

I can list things I know about how grief feels. Lonely, isolating, sad, angry, depressed, hopeless, etc. 

What I didn't know is how it can make your body feel. Lungs and heart seem to magically disappear making the chest cavity feel like it belongs to the Tinman. Swallow a marble and you'd most certainly have something resembling a maraca. The cavern ends in your stomach where it's been pierced through with a sword. Legs and arms have turned into wet concrete, heavy and slow to move while the head seems to not be attached, merely observing. 

Loneliness rolls around inside the chest never allowing forgetting to quiet the echo. Sadness balls up tightly around the sword in the belly holding onto it tightly.

Laughter and fake smiles camouflage the tears and pain while a weak "I'm okay" escapes.