A beautiful woman at school gave me a
book about grief about a month or so ago. She might be a little
younger than I am, but if she is, she wears it much more heavily than
I do. And as I read through the first couple of pages, I began to
see why that might be so. Grief happens. Loss happens. It is
unavoidable. It is absolutely an irrevocable intransigent part of
life. It cannot be unwound from the fabric of who and what we are as
human beings and our experience here on this planet. That being
said, it can be the single most heart-wrenching, horrific,
unbelievably painful experience known to man. To lose something that
we have grown to love, to lose something familiar, constant,
expected, counted upon, something to which we have gifted the
illusory notion of object permanence.... There is no going back from
that; there is only going forward. And as trite as that may seem to
the recently afflicted, I say that as one who experiences grief as a
nearly constant experience in my life. In fact, every day has become
its own sort of grieving in the sense that every day is not what the
days before it were, and never shall be again. Every day becomes a
sort of grieving ritual, and also a celebration. Because too, in
every day, there are beautiful little miracles and pieces of magic
that show up and appear as you begin to awaken yourself to their
presence. And as you begin that, and whether it is coming out from
the loss of a marriage, a loved one, a pet, or a home, or a stage of
life, or many altogether, you begin to see that change can be part of
the true magic of living. And again, I say that knowing that for
many who have experienced recent loss, or who are experiencing loss
at this time, that this may be of no comfort to you. You have heard
all of the cute little sayings. You have tried to buoy yourself with
mantras and affirmations. You have probably read books and paid for
time with well-intentioned counselors. I am sure that you have had
friends and family “reach out,” in many (although not always
helpful) ways and means. I can promise you that you will find balance
again if you want to. I can also promise you that you will find joy
again; that there is peace and acceptance on the other side of this,
and maybe even gratitude. You will find times and places in your
life when things will be exactly as you need them to be, and life
will flow in beautiful ways for you again, and your faith in life and
in the world will be momentarily restored. This is part of an
ongoing choice that we all have as mindful, deliberate, conscious
beings. We can choose our roles in life. We can choose whether we
are the lost and heartbroken grieving wretches that society sometimes
paints us as. We can also choose to be beacons of light and joy and
gratitude in a world full of magic and blessings. We can choose to
start feeding ourselves on the beauty and the love of life, even if
it begins by living through others vicariously. We can choose this,
and reject the starvation and penitence of misery and grief. We can
choose to feed our hungry souls. We can feed ourselves with the
nutrients of life and love that will help ease over our hurts and
close the holes in our hearts and souls. And to some people in my
life apparently, it is a surprise that I still tend to emotionally
distance myself so much from the things that I love; the things that
I crave to reach out to embrace and adore. But I have known pain,
and that becomes like a disease in your life left unchecked. And
even as I fight it now, fight back against my defensive propensity to
push people and places and communities and opportunities away from my
heart because I know at some point that they will be taken
away-- that all things are impermanent-- I still long for those deep,
meaningful connections. I long to lose myself in loving life and the
people and places around me. I long to fall deeply and courageously
in love, unflinchingly in love, with all things, beginning first and
foremost with myself. And as I begin to become accustomed to my own
constancy and continuity of soul, even through all of my revisions of
consciousness and physical changes, I begin to learn how to love
better the life that I have been gifted with.
