i have heard grief be referred to as many things. a staircase, a mountain, seasons of the year. i have also considered a new metaphore for grief.

the ocean has been a prominent noun in my vocabulary for a long time. my father grew up near the atlantic ocean. i spent a few of my summers by the same atlantic ocean, on the same beach as my father. i have always longed for the smell of the ocean, especially when i am far from what feels like my home. my nights were fitful and i was well rested when i visted his hometown because i would fall asleep to that ocean breeze; the cool nature of that area. i would also fall asleep to the lingering smell of salt that would soothe me. i remember staying up most of the night reading, just so i could take in the smells of my nana's house. sometimes, when i walk home at night, i receive an instance of those familiar scents. i stop on the sidewalk and clothes my eyes, breathing it in until it is no longer there.

grief, is very much like an ocean. when i first found out about my father's illness, this was my feet testing out how cold the atlantic really was. when he became sicker, when the symptoms began to show more, this was me wading out into the ocean. over the past three years, i was sitting in this ocean, wading and, ironically, waiting for what i could only feel was going to happen. it became warm after a while but soon my body would be thrust deeper and it would become colder. as the ocean, it was never stationary, his illness; his symptoms.

when i found out that night, that night that is forever imprinted in my mind like a tattoo on the grey matter of my brain, i was pulled under by a current. i was thrust head under and i couldn't breathe. i was swimming, exerting all energy i had to reach the top again but as soon as i could see the sky beginning to break through i was pulled underneath once more. it was terrifying and numbing, i was beginning to lose the strength to keep on pushing for the division between the air and the water.

i became cold. i became so tired and cold and i could feel my lungs wanting to burst from lack of oxygen. i could feel hands pulling for me, trying to help me out. pull after pull, i began to move closer and i could see the sun spilling over. i pushed my head through and broke the water's wall. i breathed in large gulps and looked thankfully at the people that had kept me from becoming enthralled in my pain, in the aching of my heart.

it hasn't gone away. i am still, time to time, pulled under by this wave. sometimes i let it carry me for miles out into the ocean before i dare to try and reach out for a single breath and other times it is sudden and i'm terrified, just wanting to breathe; to be happy. it's this sudden onset and sometimes you can see it coming. you can see the hurt, and the pain, and that emptiness coming back and you try so hard to fight it. like the fin of a shark while you have a bleeding ankle, you wish to God that something will save you; will pull you to safety and though you see this, you can do nothing. nobody understands what you're trying to say. "how can you see that him being gone is going to affect you more in a few days?" or "how can you know you're going to be sad. couldn't you just change it?"

unfortunately, it isn't like that. it's this slow degradation into it and you try so hard to smile and be happy and you cannot. it consumes you in the end as the shark would and you feel the guilt for everyone else settling. i should make you happy. i should make you feel good about yourself. i shouldn't be some "bump on a log".

the ocean, though in most times it is a symbol of home... here it is the metaphore of the acute pain i feel from his death.