What is grief, they ask?
Grief is like breath.
It expands filling each crevice of the body.
It contracts
Leaving space for joy and peace.
It inhabits.
A guest that moves in without invitation
And becomes a companion.
Grief is jagged, messy, and cruel.
A tempestuous storm
Surging and crashing all around and within.
Grief softens
More malleable, even tranquil.
It does not stop reminding us
Of the loss we have endured.
Shades of gray can touch the most luminous of skies.
Tears fall and dampen the sweetest of smiles.
Grief retreats
Leaving space to cultivate laughter, love, and healing.
It reminds us
If we let it
To choose life, to live this precious gift.
Even as we are reminded
Or perhaps because of it
How precarious it might be.
We cannot outrun grief.
It will find every hiding place.
In its cunning, it sees our every attempt to outwit and outsmart.
But we can
Yes, we really can
Learn to be with it.
Grief is stunningly and achingly bereft of beauty
While somehow still imbued with color and life.
It is a dull landscape
Illuminated by the backdrop of a stunning sky.
It is the hush that settles over newly fallen snow.
It is that first hint of color
The emergence of a rainbow
After Mother Nature has released her fury.
It is life
It is death
It is unending, unbearable
And yet it becomes endurable, habitable, even tolerable.
What is grief? They ask…
It is all these things and more.
It is feelings that can’t be encapsulated into words.
It is connection that can’t be buried in any grave.
It is love.
In its most infinite, enduring and abiding form.