You don't know true pain until you crave a conversation with someone who's gone

Not the loud grief. Not the part everyone shows up for — the funeral, the flowers, people telling you "sorry for your loss" and meaning it for about a week. I mean the part nobody prepares you for. The part that hits eight months later when you're standing in a grocery store aisle for no reason, holding some stupid item, and you go to text them before your brain catches up and goes... oh. Right. You can't.

That's it. That's the whole wound, right there, over and over.

You don't miss them in one big wave. You miss them in pieces. In the specific way they'd laugh at something dumb you did. In the...