Grief sits on me like a beached whale, stifling, decaying, lost potential and life. 

Grief walks with me, now an old friend, well known; we know each others rhythms and habits.

Grief stalks me, watching from close by and letting me know it is there, but never knowing when it will approach or trespass.

Unlike death, grief remains. Death takes a break, it is like a good visitor, come, stay, and then depart in a timely way. Death has boundaries that we understand, even if we don’t like them. But grief… it has the shittiest boundaries and timelines.

Grief over friends, jobs, bodies failing or changing, death, relationships, dreams, trauma, trespass, war, the world, leaders who led wrongly, suicide and utterly preventable death… These are the griefs I sit with… that sit on me…. that trespass into my moments of joy or busy-ness, suddenly stealing my breath, my smile, my light.

The difficulty with grief is, as long as you don’t deny it, there is no right way to process it. There is no path that eases it. Talking about it, to friends, therapists, doctors, family… it may temporarily ease it… but it does not depart faster for doing so. Medication only dampens it so we cannot hear, see, feel fully and thus, delays our healing, our breath. The only answer to grief is to look it full on and give it time. Time to laugh, cry, wail, rail, sleep, fight, remember, or work with it. 

I try to find joy, give thanks, praise, and laughter to get it to pass and it won’t. It will not be rushed. It will not be coerced and it will not be denied for long. And so I sit, when grief decides today or this moment is the one to face it. I let it wash over me and I do not apologize to the world anymore for it. For I know the world carries it’s own grief, too.

And that is the only clarity I have… that if I allow it to be, to evolve, to breath too, it will eventually ease and let me have my joy, my laughter, my light.