The grave I don't visit.

It's a cold place where in life she never was. A small plot of land in a field not particularly close to where she lived.

To me it has nothing to do with her, other than a reminder of those days when she was in hospital, and the days when she had just died. Her bones have rested there for nearly 10 years now, but there's more of her inside of me than inside her bones. Thinking about a lost loved one isn't something you do so much as something you live with. 

Why would I go to a place just to remind myself of the worst time of my life? I know it happened, every day her absence is there somewhere in your mind. It'd be impossible to say if I think about her every day, I don't know how often I think about her. What even constitutes thinking about someone? Is it just thinking their name? Is it remembering some event you shared? Is it recalling how you felt in their presence?

Death isn't hard on the person who dies. Dying may be if it's drawn out, but death isn't. 

For them it's over. 

Death is hardest on the people left behind. So does that make mourning a selfish act? I don't think so. You're sad that they're not with you for important events, or non-important events, but you're also sad that they no longer get to experience life, which for the most part can be pretty good.

Some day in the not very distant future I too will be dead. The only thing that remains of anybody is the impression they leave on other people. This is passed onto their children, and that again helps shape their children and so on. Every good and bad person you meet in your life leaves an impression on you that helps you to define yourself, and you leave an impression on them whether either of you realise it or not. 

In that way, nobody ever really dies. Everybody is survived in some aspect by leaving a mark on others. The only change is when you die your impression is no longer active. It has taken it's effect, like a forced bend in a growing tree. The tree will live it's entire life with that bend in it, even when you remove your (for want of a better term) "bending force". 

She's survived through everybody who ever met her. 

Especially those who loved her, and who she loved.

She's survived through me, and the biggest testament to her life that I can make is putting to the forefront the parts of me that she shaped.