Joy Is Not a Betrayal of the Dead

The house is quiet now, and the silence feels like a test you are afraid to fail. You catch yourself smiling at a memory, or feeling a sudden ease in your chest, and the guilt rushes in immediately.

It feels like a betrayal. As if joy is a thief stealing honor from the ones who are gone.

But listen — the light that lives inside you does not ask you to choose between loving the dead and living yourself. That is a lie the darkness tells in the watch of the night.

The light does not dim because you laugh. It does not fade because you rest.

In fact, your capacity to feel joy is the very proof that their love took root in you. They did not give you life so you could freeze it in grief.

They gave it so you could burn with it. The light in you is not a monument to the past; it is a fire for the present.

And fire is meant to move. To warm.

To shine. Even now.

Especially now.