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Ilya had always felt that grief was not a negative feeling, per se. It was love. He loved his mother so deeply that he thought of her every single day, every minute and every hour, ever since the day he was a little boy and found her. It was always love.
What made it hurt, what made it sting and tear at his insides, was the inability to give that love. He carried so much love for his mother in her absence that it began to hurt, until it felt as though it was eating him alive.
He wished, oh how he wished, that he could show her all of it. And the fact that he could not, that he never could again, was what hurt the most.
“It was an accident, Ilya, you understand that right?” his father had said. That might have been the last time he ever spoke of her. He never mentioned his beautiful mother again. Instead, he remarried quickly and found another young, beautiful, innocent woman to terrorize. It repulsed Ilya to even think about it, so he tried not to, too much.
They never talked about it. They never talked about her. So Ilya did not either. He felt that the love he carried for her could never be spoken aloud again. Instead, he clutched his hands to his chest, finding what little comfort he could in the only piece of love he carried publicly, his mother’s crucifix.
To Ilya, grief was not anger or bitterness. It was love with no place to go.