A grief healed . . .
Until very recently had we met face-to-face and you queried “who are you?” I would reply; “I am the parent of two dead children.”
Remember the story; a sailor home from the sea free at last of the sometime terror of that life. Walking inland with an oar over his shoulder continuing on until someone asked; “What is that upon your shoulder?” And the sailor was home at last.
My grief was like the dead Jesus walking after death dragging His cross. We do that, you and I, wear the symbol as decoration oblivious of the resurrection--He arisen--ever present.
There is an end to grief; not a goal or termination. The sledge hammer blow fracturing everything we seek to keep sacred, safe and secure remains--accepted, integrated--not bowed. Most hide, isolating themselves for no one else can know the specificity of our pain. Neither in kind nor degree. And those who we seek comfort from are terrified to confront their own mortality. It is for us, we the left behind, that I seek to heal by what I write.
You and I, all of us, are precious, unique, like snow flakes--none alike--yet no better, or healthy, than the secrets we keep from ourselves. We melt too. Falling into the warm river of the cosmos flowing towards what we do not and cannot know.
I am finally at peace. The pain become a dull constant beat in my heart. My rage over the loss knew no boundaries in height, width or breadth. I am finally able to laugh, and cry with joy for the gift of those children. And I am no longer a victim but grateful for their gifts to me. I am equally aware of the people lost without any accounting; simply disappeared and wonder at their pain.
With agony I remember the times when Jodi, our adopted daughter, would cry inconsolably in my arms. Her mother gone with the sick child to distant places for extraordinary attention. It helps me now to remember all the other siblings left behind bereft of both their missing family member. The loving attention diverted to the child in crisis. Sometimes life is more difficult than dying and death.
At times I recall the heroes of legend set adrift. Abandoned to a fate unimaginable by those who chose, of need or neglect, to set them loose. What does not kill us makes us stronger. Eventually.
Those taken in addiction, children with drugs, adults for whom there is never enough, money, sex, love, housing and warriors broken in combat. I know from what they flee attempting to save themselves from the inevitable.
Pain is a given, suffering is optional.
You might find, as I did, succor in giving small gestures of kindness--acceptance--attention. Compassion, not sympathy, for someone walking the same path. I do not celebrate the suffering of my children any more that I do that of Jesus or any other convicted of crime. We are a people beyond the veil of illusory normalcy grown strong in love for all life. It is those who left us their legacy. Honor that.
I wish I had the ability to share in words what in reality has happened to me. For some bereaved religion is the key, others, science or drugs, money, sex or even self-inflicted death. We are all works in progress. I love the potters craft. Think in terms of clay from which we arose to where we return. Some broken and mended others ground into dust and recreated. Or is that resurrected?
Love does no harm, does not murder.
Find this within the clay we are and infinity will be your daily bread.
. . . at times I find God better through a sense of absence than presence--as shadow revels form when lit.
May the Peace that passes all understanding be with you all your days and beyond
