It would help a lot if grief were simple. If we knew what shape it would take; what time it would show up on any given day. If we knew a pill to take, or a diet to follow, that would head off the “symptoms.” But it’s always a surprise. Lurks around a corner when you least expect it. You could be having one of those days when it seems the cloud has finally begun to lift, and you’re actually having fun! Or at least, having an okay day. Just puttering along, thinking of nothing at all. Then, there it is. There you are. In the swamp, the crevasse, the impossible emptiness of loss. Damn!

Grief is inconvenient. It’s messy and irritating and embarrassing, and it knows how to hide. For a while. Until it doesn’t. Grief is lonely, even when you’re surrounded by people you love. Sometimes – oftentimes – you just don’t want to be happy. Who the hell wants to be happy when there’s a cold wind blowing right through you, every single day!?

Grief is mean. It nags and pokes and won’t leave you alone. It gets under your skin; hides out in your bones; shows up in your face even when you think you’re smiling. Other people notice, but you’ve forgotten how you look without it.

Grief is exhausting. It takes everything you’ve got, and then keeps taking.
It keeps calling you, and even though you want to ignore it, would give (almost) anything if you could run the other way, you turn toward it instead. You can’t turn away. Grief is seductive. It keeps saying, “Here, come this way. This is where you’ll find what you’ve lost. Stay with me for a while, and maybe…….well, you never know.”

And the problem is, there’s truth to that. Grief is, after all, what’s left of what you’ve lost. And as much as we think we might want to be free of the heaviness of loss, grief brings some important truths.

Grief means you’re alive. It means you still care. It means someone, or some thing, meant so much to you that you’re not sure life is worth the effort without what, or whom, you’ve lost.

It means that once, you were vulnerable; open and soft, unguarded, hopeful. It means you believed in joy. It means that, even now, you’re still linked with every living thing that shifts and stretches up toward a future, only to find an end at some point. It means you are somehow managing to stand, and bear, the wrenching reality of this lush and limited life. And you’re learning to say, “Yes. I can do this, even though it tears me apart. I am here, even though my beloved is not. I can breathe, wait for peace, have hope, find tiny bits of joy, open and expand my heart, learn how to face this new road forward.”

And that can be enough, at least for now.