My Own Grief Observed

If I fully embrace grief, perhaps the thought itself would shatter me, for the loss of a deep love is a pain no one can muster and no one should.

The way I thus approach it (and I’ve been advised), is to redirect my focus towards other healthy activities - to bombard my life with anything and everything that can prevent my pace from turning into a solid stop, like the first shock that divided my past from the present, for that is how death presents itself. Life, however, could never be thick enough to be filled with an abundance of work or study, and I find that after a lengthy day, moments of silence still await me.

I dread these moments. They point to the sharpness of my grandmother’s absence. She was truly a soul of pure light. She had an unswerving compassion for the lowly and her humble life leaked with gentleness and contentment. I could believe Christ’s teachings because she demonstrated it first.

Notice how tea leaves unavoidably steep in boiling water, unfurling and releasing its fragrance and flavour with every passing second. By the end of the fifth minute, the water has become tea, and there is no undoing. Similarly, there is no part of me where her essence has not claimed. She was in every milestone and memory; I struggle to bear that she will never be.

If I should carry her with me, it would be just as heavy as attempting to forget her. A part of me wants to carry on, without her shadow saddling behind. But if I should decide to forget her, woe betide me that I dishonor her fair countenance, and even fairer still, her tender spirit. I cannot contemplate this delicate balance for now; my soul is stricken in her absence.

I wail inside for the loss of a home. I had exercised this occurrence again and again since childhood, contemplating how broken it would make me feel. Nothing however, could ever prepare me for her passing. The heart simply cannot embrace death.