Grief

Grief is not a feeling. It’s a capstone resting squarely upon every block of your being, which is apparently located somewhere between your stomach and lungs. The weight of it, when first received, can weaken the knees and forestall any effort to fight against the gravitational pull of the earth’s core. The stone comes uncut and jagged; shallow breaths and small meals are advised.

Sometimes the grief you carry, snug within the cage of your ribs, is not just the pain of a life you lost. It’s the pain of a person you never got to meet. It’s a lifetime of love you never received. Sometimes a person is already gone before you even get to meet them, before you are even born.

When those infamous rogue waves of life have already crushed them, the cruelties of the world have abused them and stolen their innocence, and what little is left of them has retreated behind a titanium curtain decades wide.  

Sometimes we grieve never making it past the wall, and knowing that on the other side cowered something far more precious than rubies or gold. Something worthy of being found. It’s the loss of opportunity. The chance that you might still make it past the veil, past the pain and fear, to the heart that still beats on the other side.

Sometimes grief is anger. It makes you rage against the relentless storm of this world that is always breaking and stealing. It makes you seethe at the cycle of victims creating victims, and fume at our inability to heal them; our own helplessness in the face of injustice.

We find, with time, with every shallow breath and forced meal, with every tear that turns into a smile, the rough edges of the stone we carry are smoothed and shaped. Our memories are given new eyes of understanding. With every step forward our legs are strengthened, more able to bear the weight, and what once was a burden is now a treasured gemstone.

We peek behind the curtain, and find that the cage has been unmade. What once was bound is free.