Grappling with Grief

Transitioning to the fall triggers a subconscious memory for me of things getting harder as the mornings grow darker. It’s a lingering foreboding from an intense season of loss 10 years ago when two of the people closest to me were given six months to live. I knew then that it wasn’t only the seasonal light that was fading. Despite anticipating it each fall, I never know how the grief is going to show up or even if it will. But show up it did this week in the echo of homesickness as I spoke to my dad about the holidays and as I remembered Hilary on what would’ve been her 54th birthday.

 I found myself lying awake last night wondering if I give too much thought to the past or if I’m more inclined to want to remember things as a daughter of someone who had Alzheimer’s disease. Either way, I offer no apology. And here’s why: remembering the people and places I have lost or left behind reminds me how to LIVE. I wouldn’t be who I am, nor would I see the world the way I do, without having wrestled with grief. It’s created a sense of urgency to live life in a way that all my senses are turned on and tuned in. It’s heightened my propensity for wonder and forced me to notice a world buzzing with moments of reprieve from the mundaneness and brutality of life. And it has helped me cultivate a practice of gratitude which helps to shift the cloud when it descends to block my view. 

When I’m reminded of this, I stop questioning my motive for invoking the past. Instead, I lean into the memories, pull up the old photographs, and do the walks in honor of the names I don’t want to forget. I no longer resist grief’s arrival but rather welcome it in like an old friend. Because here’s the thing, we don’t grieve what we haven’t loved and that’s one thing I know I do: love deeply.