Paul Rees - Civil Celebrant

💔💜💔💜💔

You always said goodbye like it was nothing — see you soon, and out the door you'd go.

This time there was no warning, no chance to hold on a second longer.
So now I look for you in small red wings and quiet moments, and I swear you find your way to me.
You may have left the room, but you never really left my side.

What's the one thing you'd say if you could say it now?

Tag someone who needs to feel a little less alone.

💜💜💜

I miss you more than words can say,
and think of you every single day.

It sits with its back to the frame,
small against one enormous gold-leafed tree,
facing out toward a field
that keeps its distance in soft amber light.

I used to think missing someone
would eventually need fewer words to explain.

It doesn't.
It just gets harder to say out loud,
even as the reason for saying it
stays exactly as present as it was on day one.

The leaves don't fall while it's sitting there.
The light doesn't dim to end the scene.

It just stays under the tree a while longer,
facing the same field,
thinking the same thought
it thinks every single day, without needing new words for it.

— Angels Are Near

💜💜💜😔

If you’ve ever been there, leave a message for them, or for anyone reading this who needs a little kindness today.

❤️ Sometimes strangers understand in ways no one else can.

Active link to the blog is here https://www.forevermissed.com/blog/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post

😔💜

The dandelion lets its seeds
drift off to answer distant needs,
each piece of white a part of me
that left when you stopped breathing free.
I am not who I used to be,
some part of me went off with thee,
scattered now upon the wind,
a version of myself, thinned.
The field stands quiet in the haze,
the sun sets soft on empty days,
and I stand rooted, torn in half,
missing pieces, missing laugh.
They say that grief will make you new,
reshape you into something true,
but first it has to take its share,
first it has to leave you bare.
I watch the seeds float far and wide,
like all the parts of me that died
the day you left this world behind —
a different self I've come to find.
So I am changed, and that's the truth,
I lost a piece of who I was youth,
but what remains still loves you still,
and always, always, always will.
— Angels Are Near

💔 💜

Love does not end.
Grief is the evidence that love is still here, still reaching for the person who is not.

If your grief feels like love with nowhere to go, you are not alone at The Grief Table.

💔

The silhouette has its chin dropped to its chest —

that particular angle of a head that has been carrying something heavy for a long time.
The wild carrot flowers beside it

have gone the same blue-gray as everything else in this fog.
They are still standing.

That is the thing I keep noticing — the flowers are still upright in all of this.
I used to think grief was something

that happened and then stopped happening.
I kept waiting for the part where it was finished —

the way a project finishes, the way a season ends and becomes the next one.
The silhouette knows better now.

It wears the knowing the way it wears that dark coat — completely, all the way to the collar.
No remove.
The fog is not a backdrop here.

It is an active presence — thickening, shifting, thinning, returning —
the way this specific grief moves through the weeks:

not diminishing, just changing its texture.
I am in the fog. The fog is in me.

The carrot flowers don't seem to notice either way.
They just stand there in their gray-blue quiet,

heads level, stems holding.
I have been trying to learn from the flowers.

It is taking longer than I expected.
I am still learning.

The fog has not asked me to hurry.
— Angels Are Near

💜💜💜

She has folded herself into her own knees
the way you fold a letter
you've already memorized
and can't stop carrying anyway.
The cardinal above her hasn't made a sound.
He's just there, on the bare branch,
watching the same gray water
she's watching, from a different height.
The waves keep arriving and leaving.
Arriving and leaving.
She has stopped expecting them
to bring anything back.
Her feet are bare in the cold sand.
She hasn't noticed,
or she has noticed
and decided it doesn't matter anymore.
Then —
the bird shifts its weight on the branch,
a small sound she feels
more than hears, through the fog.
She doesn't look up.
But something in her shoulders loosens,
the way rope loosens
when it's no longer being pulled from both ends.
— Angels Are Near

💜💜💜

Nobody tells you how heavy a single flower can feel
when it is the only thing left growing in the dirt.
The white petals are cool against the tip of my finger,
shining like a small beacon under the basement light.

The dry soil smells like dust and forgotten cellar floors,
crumbling into fine grey powder when I touch the edge.
There is a total absence of wind in this dark corner,
making the silence feel like a wall I cannot climb over.

I remember the wild fields where we used to gather them,
filling jars until the kitchen table looked like a meadow.
Now there is just this one stem standing in the dark grit,
holding its head up against the heavy shadows.

I choose to water this solitary plant every evening.
I keep it under the lamp instead of letting it wither.
This single stem is a green anchor in the floorboards,
holding down the memory so it cannot drift away.

Just this.
The yellow center looks like a drop of old paint,
bright and stubborn against the surrounding blackness.
The roots go down into a place I cannot follow.

I left the watering can by the cellar stairs.
I don't know why.
I just look at it in the dark.
I keep leaving it there.

— Tears of Memory