Since You've Been Gone

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Life doesn't stop even when you lose someone.

It doesn't stop long enough to let you grieve, or to fully settle with the idea that things will never be the same.

Or that you've lost a part of you that you'll never be able to get back.

I doesn't warn either.

It just happens...

'It takes time,' they've all said. Time is supposed to heal all wounds, so people have said.

But, it never does.

Times doesn't heal, time comforts slowly. It settles.

The pain never goes away, it just becomes numb over time. Easier to cope.

It doesn't heal.

Time just makes it easy to get accustom to the pain, to where it doesn't feel so intense.

Time is just slow ounces of morphine, settling through your system little by little.

But it doesn't take the pain away. Not completely.

The memories, that can't go away.

The remaining essence of their being left behind.

A picture.

It's all a reminder, of that pain.

Of that longing.

Of those missed words.

Of those regrets.

But it never goes away. It's always there, in the back of my head. Eating away at me slowly as I grow old with those thoughts.

"Dad, come on, don't you want to go join everybody outside?" Morgan asked with a soft voice as she bent besides his chair and reached out to take his hand.

Derek didn't reply to her, instead his eyes stayed focused on the picture sitting in front of him.

The smile that had been settled on Morgan's face had faded at the lack of her father's response. Instead, her eyes had followed his eyes to the picture of her mother sitting there in front of him. She's seen that picture before, countless of times.

It was always the same one.

A small sigh escaped this her lips as she squeezed her father's hand. "Dad, you can't keep doing this..." She said carefully so not to hurt him. "It's been nearly 30 years, Dad. I know it's hard, but you can't keep staring at that picture forever. You have to let him go dad...Please..." She said not being able to help choke up towards the end.

She'd been seven years old, when her mother had passed away. But that didn't mean it didn't hurt her too. Every time she saw him alone staring at that portrait of her mother, it pained her. She knew her mother had been her father's greatest love, and that would never change no matter how long time passed. But it pained her and her brothers to not be able to help him, or fill that void and pain for him no matter how hard they tried.