Grief

Grief is a funny thing. Bendy and twisted, it weaves itself through the very fiber of your being. In the quiet private moments is can be felt clearly, a melancholy void that sits deep in your chest. In the busy moments surrounded by people, grief can take the air out of the room, dulling the colors. The onset of grief is rarely expected. Yet, it will become familiar; it’s sharpness dulled but felt just as deeply.

It is true what they say grief doesn’t get any smaller; we just grow around it. This saying makes me think of this picture I once saw of a children’s bike inside a tree trunk and up several feet in the air. The bike didn’t disappear or get any smaller; the tree just kept growing, navigating around and embracing the bicycle, and then eventually moved forward carrying the bike with it. 

So we must treat our grief the same, not at the enemy unfairly impeding our growth, not as something to be cut out, gotten over, buried, or cast aside. Instead, we must see grief as something we now carry with us, a new piece to our wild, confusing, beautiful mosaic of self.

We grieve because we love. So, let us not hide our grief and be not ashamed or weakened by it. For our grief is the monument we bear on our souls, the testament of our hearts, the enduring proof that we did indeed know love.