Echo Protocol - The Person Who Raised Me

E-mail me to request a custom song: echoprotocolmusic@gmail.com Personal private song's I don't post: $5. Public song's I can post: Free. Song's subject to rejection at my discretion. My extension to this main channel: Echo Protocol Lab - ‪@EchoProtocollab‬ Lyrics: I still reach for the phone when something happens, then remember there is nowhere left to call. The house is full of things you left behind, but the person who made it home is gone. Nobody teaches you what to do with love when they die. You were there before I knew what fear was, before I knew the world could take things away. You taught me how to stand when I was falling, how to find my way through another broken day. Now your chair is empty at the table, your voice is trapped inside my memories. I hate the silence because it tells me your death is real, and you're not coming home. People say, they’re in a better place, like better places make the missing disappear. They say, be strong, when I can barely breathe. Grief is not a wound that closes clean. It is learning how to live around a hole. Some mornings I can almost feel okay, then one little thing destroys control. I lost the person who raised me, and nothing makes that sentence less cruel. I lost a piece of where I came from, a voice that taught my heart what love could do. I can scream, I can cry, I can fall apart, I can hate the sky for taking you away. I don't have to pretend this doesn't hurt. Your death changed the shape of my life, but it cannot erase the life you gave. I will carry the pain because I carry you, and learn to live without forgetting your name. There are days I am angry at the universe, angry at doctors, time, God, and fate. The world keeps moving like nothing happened, while I stand beside an empty space. I remember the arguments, the laughs, the ordinary nights, the moments I never knew I'd someday miss. That is the cruelest part of losing someone you lose every tomorrow you thought you'd have. No final conversation can contain a lifetime. I replay everything, wondering what I should have said before you passed away. I lost the person who raised me, and nothing makes that sentence less cruel. I lost a piece of where I came from, a voice that taught my heart what love could do. I can scream, I can cry, I can fall apart, I can hate the sky for taking you away. I don't have to pretend this doesn't hurt. Your death changed the shape of my life, but it cannot erase the life you gave. I will carry the pain because I carry you, and learn to live without forgetting your name. Sometimes healing feels like betrayal, like laughing means I am leaving you behind. Sometimes I feel guilty for having a good day, as if happiness is something I don't deserve to find. But healing is not forgetting your face. It is making room for grief beside the living, and carrying what you gave me as I move on. I will miss you in birthdays, holidays, and silence. Every future will hold a moment when I wish I could tell you. If you are standing where I once stood, with a parent's death heavy in your chest, don't force yourself to solve the grief tonight. Some days surviving is enough; that's not weakness. Write down the memories while you still can. Write the stories, the fights, the jokes, the little things. Write who they were and who they were to you. Write the love, the anger, and the pain. Write it ugly. Write the truth. Then write them a letter when words won't leave you. Tell them you miss them. Tell them you're afraid. Tell them what you wish you could have said. Tell them about the future you're trying to make. Talk to them when the room is quiet. Say their name when you need somebody near. Tell them who you're becoming. Tell them you'll keep going. Tell them you love them. Tell them you're angry. Tell them the truth you couldn't say before. Then breathe and let the tears come without shame, because grief is love still searching for a place to go. You are not betraying them by choosing to live. You are not forgetting them when you finally smile. Take their memories, lessons, and love into every tomorrow. You don't have to get over losing your parent. You learn to live with the loss. I still wish I could call you. I still wish death had left you here. But I can speak to you in memories, and carry you into every year. I will hurt. I will heal. I will remember. And I will live. Not because the pain stopped, but because you taught me how to keep going.