I recently read that the best cure for grief was to grieve. Duh, sounds simple enough. No big deal until one just feels weary of grieving. The grief “process”; it’s flabbergasting. It’s an exhausting, painful, crushing, hard to breathe process and every time your get your head above the waves to catch a breath, the wave crashes over you once more, and you are drowning. Again.
It’s a lump in the throat that says, “don’t speak” or the torrent of tears will come, but what choice is there? Swallow the bitter bile down into your seemingly empty soul? It’s the endlessly sour tummy that won’t go away no matter how many Tums are downed or how cautious the diet is. It’s the tightness across the back that burns and is only alleviated by deep pressure; because the pressure reminds us that we are alive. It’s the clenched jaw accompanied by tense neck muscles that are holding the world in place and the twitching eyelid that is imagined to be the worst kind of tumor in the anxious, exhausted mind.
It’s joyful laughter when a certain scent, song, memory…anything comes to surface…but then it is followed by an unsolicited, salty rain…running down soft cheeks without warning. It is the penetrating sense of emptiness that ravishes the soul and the nightmare that haunts in the daytime. Grief is the reminder of loss….over, and over and over again. It is said that time heals all wounds. I find this to be an intricately woven unreality that was designed to protect hearts from further pain.
Grief is obviously front and center in my world today and the effect is snowballing. I am hurting for people that I love dearly because they lost a man precious to them. He was a father, a son, a once in a lifetime dream love, a friend, a brother, an Uncle, not- simply…an honorable man who lived to make others smile. I hurt for my niece and nephew who have never experienced this kind of loss before. The first time with grief is unlike anything , the last and the middle griefs are no better.
Heartache. Loss. Tears. Unutterable prayers. Pain. In all of it, the healing has begun, I think. Maybe the healing begins the minute we even connect and the pain of loss reminds us just how important love and each moment are. It doesn’t matter right now though, right now is not celebration…right now just hurts.
I cry for their losses. I cry for my losses. I cringe at the thoughts running through my mind. I wish I had a grief formula to follow. Do blah blah blah and then do yada yada yada and in a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, everything will be okay. Getting to the point of celebrating what was before the loss will come but your life has been forever changed. My life has been forever changed. This is truth and for now, I’m kinda tired of grief and all that accompanies it.
SUNKISSED SOUL 