Grief

When someone you love leaves . . . the most shockingly painful thing that happens is that the world just continues to spin. It just doesn’t stop. It keeps barrelling forward as if your world had not crashed and ended.

But I wonder if there is a blessing weaved in there somewhere, in the places our eyes can’t see. A blessing that, in the end, helps us.

Your world crashed. Your heart stopped. Your being shattered. You forgot how to exist.

But your heartbeat continued. You drew and released breath. Your scattered body eventually reunited into a semblance of the person you were.

Perhaps the world continues is path so that our essence has something to emulate once the glare of the pain subsides a little.

The world breathes so we may match it. Its heart beats so ours finds the rhythm. The beauty that is always there even when we cannot see it continues so we have something to search for.

I do not begrudge the world that it continues its course despite my pain. It is my own failings that make me angry, screaming, “STOP! DON’T YOUR SEE THAT THIS TERRIBLE THING HAS HAPPENED!? PLEASE! ACKNOWLEDGE IT! STOP ACTING AS IF IT DIDN’T MATTER, AS IF SHE DIDN’T MATTER, AS IF MY UNIVERSE DIDN’T JUST DISINTEGRATE! PLEASE UNDO IT! PLEASE!”

The world knows. It does acknowledge our pain. It tempers our loss. She owes us nothing, but helps us as she can, breathing, spinning, dreaming.