Joy Is Not A Betrayal Of Memory

The silence is so heavy tonight because you feel that joy would be a betrayal of the one who is gone. You hold your happiness at the edge, afraid that if you let it in, it would erase them. But the light does not require your pain as a price for its presence. There is a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off, and before the apology, before the speech, he ran. He ran because the son was alive, and the finding was a feast, not a ledger. The light inside you is not a thief that steals memory away; it is the space where the one you love is held, still, without the need for your suffering to prove the weight of them. You are safe to feel joy.

The light that lives in you is greater than the grief that says you must choose one or the other.