When someone you love dies it feels like part of you dies too. The world as you know it changes. Living with lost, seeing the world through the eyes of grief it is hard to describe, the world keeps moving and yet you feel you are motionless.
It takes time to gather the pieces left behind and put them in place. The pieces do not fit the same way, it gives a different perspective. We might not want to face the change. So we re-shift the pieces until they fit.
Living,
when the one we love has died,
is not easy.
My friend Ladelle is staying with us as she mourns the loss of her husband.
We sit. Sometimes we talk, often we do not. Though listening is ever present.
As I listen to her I hear the echo of distant sadness within me. I recall the time I was in the monastery and barely twenty years old. My Grandmother had died, sadness was my new best friend. A Sister, Miriam pulled me aside, asking me to tell her about my Grandmother. I talked and talked and talked, and in doing so watched Miriam hold my suffering. Sharing grief can help ease the pain, allowed me to breathe.
Ladelle is tender to the bone. Her faith and her love allow her to breathe.
She aches.
I ask myself what can I do to make this moment healing.
As I watch her I recall my mother. When my father died my mother put on a brave face, though there was a distant look in her eyes.
Grief unfolds at its own pace. Though it seems unbearable to let it take its course in a world that is rushing by unaware of the monumental, earth-shattering event that has taken place within the one who is left alone.
Ladelle and I sit. Tears well up. We talk, we drink, we walkabout. She grieves. I try to give her a safe place to be.
In the midst of grieving, we see things differently. Symbolically. We place the banner of our sadness here and there… and carry on waiting for spring to come again.
The never-ending cycle of life and death. The never-ending search for meaning and love.
It is who we are.
Have you ever lost someone you loved? How did you carry on…..
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