Delayed Grief and learning to process

I've been trying to process delayed grief for about.. 6 or 7 months now and have been unsure how to put it to words. But I like to write and eventually I just... Wrote. I'm not ready to get into everything else. I'm not ready to voice the loss to anyone because I still feel immensely overwhelmed with it. I keep having dreams. I keep seeing him in them and each time I wake up, I feel it all like it's brand new again.. this time I decided to sit and write about that feeling. It's choppy, and unedited, but it's real and in the moment and I hope that it helps someone out there to process the feeling.

The waves crash over the surface. It's the last slivers of a perfect sunset. The gold's, the reds, pinks, purples encase the sky like a masterpiece. The last drips of the heat of the day fill the air. Humid. Almost sticky. And the first dots of stars begin to litter the sky like sharp points of diamond in the sky. I lay on the wet sand, soft and watch the sky. Some of these moments feel like a moment and forever all at once and then a wave covers me from head to toe and I'm drowning. I can't move though I can only feel the cold of the water encasing me as I struggle to breathe. I can't surface. Even when I try, it's like the water gets deeper and deeper and when I think I'm about to lose my life, Everything hurts and I just want to take a deep breath and then suddenly the wave retreats back and I gasp for air. My eyes water. My heart thumps hard, fast, unevenly and for that quick moment I am confused and lost but before I can get footing the water encases me once again. I swim. I try to break the surface. I try to find the sky but it's blurry and maybe I've been pulled deep into the undertow. I'm panicking. I'm lost. Which way is up and down again? And then the water retreats once more and I realize.. I'm still laying on the wet sand. I haven't moved. My feet are still planted firmly in the sand. I sit up and realize the tide is going out. The sunset is gone. The sky is a velvet black of nighttime. The sharp shards of diamond stars have filled the night sky and I sit here still. I can breathe again. I'm cold. I'm feeling very alone. And I know I'm just here, waiting for the tide to come back in again.

Its numb and cold with fragments shining through of happiness. Just glimpses. Like the way a star twinkles. The memories are held in place by each of those shining rocks, like thumbtacks. And I can feel them. But I can never truly remember them. Not the way I did the first time.

I can see the faded memory of a smile, the pitch of voice, the freckles that dotted your skin so carefully. The way your eyes crinkled with amusement. The soft pitch of your voice. The way the sun caught the highlight in your hair.

But only for a moment and then it's gone. Replaced by the velvet inky blackness of the everlasting sky. Of the twinkle of the stars as they blink in and out of view. Of the waves that encroach the shore once more.