I don’t know how to adequately explain it, and I don’t think there is the capacity to explain the heaviness loss leaves you. There is an emptiness, a longing, in the pit of your soul. If you’re faithful sometimes the only thing that keeps you going is knowing you will see each other again. Sometimes your daily motivation is knowing that they wouldn’t want you to linger and wallow beneath your sheets.

You go through your day seeking signs in everything, reassurance that they’ve only truly left you physically. You stop believing in mere coincidences, everything has a meaning.

I like to think I’m blessed in that I have no regrets in the relationship I shared with my mother, my best friend. Even throughout the difficulties of teenagerhood and adulthood, the disagreements, the arguments, there was still love. My mother was adamant that no matter the events of the day, we never go to bed without saying ‘I love you’. You see, while love when unspoken can be felt, there’s still a solidification in voicing it. That ‘I love you’ is reassurance, it’s a comfort and in our house, it was our signature. There wasn’t a single phone call between my mother and me that didn’t end with ‘I love you’. I can not recall one day when we did not tell each other that we loved one another.

The day she left, the night before she left, the week before she left, the months before she left, even when we didn’t know she was leaving we loved all over her in any way possible. I remember one night, maybe a week before she left, I kissed her and I nibbled her chin, I asked her if I was annoying her. She wasn’t speaking anymore, but she made up her face and shook her head yes. I laughed and said, “that’s okay, it’s because I love you.” And I have peace with that, I have peace that my mama bear knew and knows, how much I love her. That love is infinite, unaltered by space or time. That love is ever-present.

I long for her though, and I know that will never change, so I named this blog Saudade in her honor. A word that has no true English equivalent but in Portuguese expresses a feeling of longing for someone that you love which you’ve lost. A feeling of emptiness, melancholy, or nostalgia.

It is the love that remains after someone is gone.