On Grief and Grieving...

Universe, I would like to know, why? Why do you keep taking people from me? I don't ask to hear the answers that I already know. I don't ask for another lecture or a reminder that I need to learn lessons, which I feel I have mastered by the way. I ask you because I really need to know, why? 

I know that grief is a continuation of love and that all of us here have a very limited amount of time. Some of us have longer than others, but still, it's finite. So much so that we don’t even know how much of it we have. I also know that grief is a natural thing to feel and experience. I can also hold and recognize how fragile each of us are, our relationships, our connections. But it still doesn't answer, why? 

Because even when I allow myself to feel grief, it doesn't bring that person back. Whether they have transitioned from this physical plane, or we have parted ways, grown apart, have become strangers. It doesn’t magically get better.

So if you cannot answer my question, I ask you to please give me all the time I have with the people I love and with the people who love me. Please allow me to remember that grief is a visitor, and to give me the strength to close the door on it when it stays too long. Please guide me in allowing myself to fully sink into joy and presence and love.

You know that I have a hard time doing that. I have lost too many people, and so naturally, I think that if I allow myself to truly feel, I risk all of the goodness being taken away.  And I don’t want to hear how it's an irrational fear. It's happened. You know it has. But I also know that not truly feeling joy or love does not make the grief any less.

So, because I know you cannot answer me, I ask you to please allow me to let grief in. If that's what needs to happen. If I need to come undone, break, shatter. I ask for the space to do so. And please, please, don't allow me to confuse someone new as a distraction for the loss. I've done that once before and ended up losing myself. 

But I will ask that you allow people to find me and hold me tenderly. That you show me the places where I'm able to be seen fully. Heard completely. And shown what love really means. And most importantly, I ask for the heart to come back to myself, even when I’m unrecognizable.

But most of all, I pray that outside of all of this and in my missing of all of them, you allow me to keep asking you, why? Even though you may never have an answer for me. 


-m.s. 


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