There are people who are still breathing, but inside they are shattered. They walk among us with their eyes lost, their souls torn to shreds and a heart that no longer beats, but trembles.
They are those who have known death, but it did not take them away; it only tore from them what they loved most, leaving them alive, but half alive, feeling that it is a punishment.
They live mourning like a fire that does not consume, but that suffocates. Their tears are not to heal, but to avoid madness.
When someone leaves without taking us with them, we become cemeteries with skin, tombs with names, bones that walk by inertia.
They immerse themselves in their own weeping, not to cleanse themselves, but to keep from rotting inside.
They have to do the unthinkable: find strength amidst the rubble, catch their breath as they carry the emptiness, and believe in love when what they loved is gone.
Faith falters, and when it hurts the most, God seems to be absent. They cry out to heaven hoping for justice, but life responds with lessons, none of them fair.
In the end, it is a matter of learning to walk with a lame soul, to return to life with empty hands, but a spirit full of scars.
Living after goodbye is the most brutal job there is, digging through the ashes and deciding, even if you don't feel it, that there is still something worth living.
That is not done by just anyone; it is done by the badly wounded, by those who, touched by death, choose to stay. And that, too, is to love.