We each respond in our own ways to loss and grief. Grief, as it overcomes us in waves of sadness and despair, is enfolded in each previous experience in a myriad of moments lodged into our memories.
One minute a friend is there; the next she has passed on. We do not really know where; we only feel the loss and know that she is no longer here. A split second is all it takes to move from life to death. From joy to despair.
We can never know the magnitude of someone else’s grief, for we have not lived their life. We have not walked in their shoes, or experienced their pain. We can never know the significance of loss of even the tiniest thing, for that which seems tiny to us, can carry so much meaning for the other, we would find it incomprehensible to imagine.
Some lives appear to experience so much loss, as though living in a continual season of grief, interspersed only briefly by gifts of laughter and the occasional spate of freedom from strife or worry. Some seasons sowed so unevenly and disparagingly.
I understand that I would rather have loved so violently that my grief overwhelms and devastates every crevice of my being; yet this realisation is small consolation when gripped by the longing of a crushed heart. Sometimes if feels like our grief is so great that we cannot accommodate it with our small being; as though our grief has outgrown our capacity to be with it in any way which matters.
I don’t believe that it gets easier with each loss incurred, because some losses are more majestic and consume more soul than others. I can perhaps prepare in small ways for some losses, like those which feel inevitable or are expected. The sick parent, the dying friend, or the terminally ill family dog. Though even then, I don’t know whether the ‘preparation’ actually prepares and makes the loss any easier to bear. Perhaps that’s just wishful thinking on my part.
And then there’s the pain that the loss inflicts on others, especially those we love so dearly, that their suffering of the loss is even harder to bear than the loss itself. To see another person sink into the pit of dread and despair and not be able to do anything about it, is utterly terrible. We can be fully present, bearing witness to their sadness and acknowledging their pain, without the pretence of being able to remove it. Yet each must work out grief in our own ways, in our own time; to others we can offer our presence and recognition of their grief.
We love. We grieve. We live.
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