It’s a complicated mess, being human. Grief comes on when you least expect it, after months of letting go. A simple song sparks the first hollow sob in your throat. And you have to pull over into a parking lot because of the way your body is shaking.

You will never get to see him grow old.

It doesn’t matter how hatefully you’ve been remembering him, how many bullets you’ve written on a list that is there to remind you of why you cannot reach out to him, or respond to his pleas for another chance.

You will never get to see him grow old.

A wise man once said: “You didn’t get your heart broken, only your expectations.”

So the image of a silver-haired, lined, slower-paced, maybe weaker, maybe happier, maybe more at peace version of the person you lost—that image you expected to witness in reality, will only ever be alive in your imagination.

This pain, this shivering, feverish grief, is the expectation you thought you had, trying to die a cataclysmic death.

And you start to see this pain as beautiful. You think you love this person now more than you ever did. In acceptance of all the mutual hurts, the shared failed attempts to connect and reconnect. In understanding you can’t go back. In realizing this person’s place in your own story, and you in theirs, as complete.

You may feel other expectations still kicking alive, so you hope, or ask, for them to someday dissolve.

Then you pack up your tears, restart, speed off, because you cannot stop the onward progression of life.