If depression is a black dog, then grief is a lurking kraken

I had to write a chronology of his final weeks. It is now approaching 9 months since he died, I have been finding my escape in work and burying most of the sadness, grief and the loneliness. I miss him so much.

Writing about that time, now, I can still feel that soul wrenching fear that I hid from everyone in January, when he had stomach pains and we both pretended that we believed it was merely gastric. Fighting to believe that the chemo would work and then when they denied us that 3rd cycle of treatment, turning the anger against the medics for taking the cure away.

Someone I know, quite a few someones in fact, suffer depression. The black dog. So I can quite confidently say, I do not have this black dog on my back, or at least, it is not so large or so heavy to go on my back. Maybe a small one, in my pocket. I carry on quite satisfactorily most days.

Sometimes I even feel like, hey, the wound is healing, or healed even. Then... When I am not looking, I am ambushed by a long, stringy tentacle snapping up from the murky depths, and I am dragged downwards

Life goes on

I don't care if I do