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.