After the Dark Days

Sometimes it was easy to forget, we could go through our days, and even some of the nights, without something reminding us of the Dark Days. These things, we are told, get easier with time, that the memories come less and less often and when they do, they do not burn so harshly. That is true, I suppose, but it took a long time. With the Dark Days burnt so deeply in our memories, all of our memories, it was hard to escape them completely. Even those later days, when the memories were – most of the time – little more than a dull ache, and a darkness in the memory we taught ourselves to look away from, there was always a sadness, a sense of loss visible in everyone’s face.

We became proficient at recognising the signs: the sudden silences, the laugh that sliced itself with silence as though laughter – which is the best medicine for all that ails the human, we know that now - somehow seemed inappropriate and disrespectful of all those we’d lost.

In time, though, we learnt how to laugh properly and to see that laughter is not inappropriate – it is one of the most human of sounds and one of the most comforting when the pain cuts so deep.