I’m going to be a dad by Monday. 

But I’m not one yet. 

I sit and wait and think too much, biding, biting, gnawing at my mind. 

I wonder when the last “us” moment will be with my love, the last time we’ll be just young lovers, and not somebody’s mom or dad, and it stings. 

Because change is the storm that thunders in between my ears and electrifies my heart—beating my rationale and logic into fear and taxation. 

Every potential last moment of something clings bittersweet to my mind, not quite yet my melancholy friend grief, but something less peaceful—less bearable. 

Through the thralls of this catharsis we find joy and excitement, knowing the small bit of eternity in my wife’s love will be something greater than the two of us, but then a shadowy veil remembers what is it…—oh, the word is remorse. 

This is the storm of remorse, a putrid feeling of contempt toward grief—wanting to be happy but feeling the guilt of letting go to what seems like such a perfect life. 

Abandoning stability for the unknown because while the sophist argues this choice to be our own we did not plan it and we do not wish it to come to us so soon. 

Because when us and we becomes three it means it can never just be two again, not for such a long time, until time and space and life and shade have made us into different, disparate people—remorse rampages through our hearts, until the thunder of his malice quiets in the night. 

And when the storm clears only calm is there. 

The velvety, somber twilight where grief abides is clear. 

And there we sit for a time, together, holding one another. 

Because by Monday I will be a father, and she will be a mother. 

And our dear friend grief will bid us adieu in lieu of his brother joy carrying the baton for our calm.   

And that’s what I needed to realize.

Because grief cannot give way to joy when remorse howls through the doorjambs of life, only when the calm after the storm has set in.