How Not to Grieve

Though we haven’t experienced the same things at the same time or same place, I’d like to share to see if the words are of comfort to you and in my own self-make space.

friends and family will come to you wondering if you are still grieving.

But grieving is not where you are ( anymore) and not what you are wondering. It’s how to get back to the simple things of waking, breathing. When? Soon. Then you will tell yourself to do the daily things you used to do until something gets caught in you. And you go back to just breathing.

When I had experienced such great loss I would blast the radio and drive on. the best song was the loudest one to cry into and the sound of me was gone.

Later

Let out a sound. For no one in particular. But don’t care if they’re around. It is not for them. And it is not sexy. So please, do not worry if they worry about you when you do this sound for you.  It wasn’t until I shut the radio off, drinking only, the pack of colored water I had floating around in back of my car, that I could shift gears. No, I can not demonstrate that banshee like noise emanating out of my ribs. But that she- cry, that howl is what you need.

the sound soaked up my skin and I was bare to discover- you can’t white knuckle grief. It is not something of strength, the ways of your muscles, how much you can endure.

You may wonder how losing a part of you, the part that was loved and nurtured within the person you knew will never been seen. In religions, our stories are connected. Man brings life to another. We survive by how we are willing to listen.

Like a child with no experience with what he cannot see, loss is where the air exists and what happens to snow once it  is Spring. Longing is object permanence and what has happens to us in between, becomes us as a simple being.

When you lie in bed at night and close your eyes, whisper, “Come along”. Tell yourself, you have a great responsibility now. To carry your love along with you, not just yours but theirs. And soon their stories will become part of you again. They will stop in you, as you are moving, but soon you will listen without reminding yourself to go on.