what I know about grief…

In my experience grief is formless, bottomless…sneaky;

it transmogrifies as it finds necessity…and it is patient.

But it is not bigger than Love.

It appears, in fact, that it is only where great love goes

that grief follows.

Grief is love’s shadow.

Like love it pushes me into an awareness of the eternal…

Will we Always be together?         

What happens when we part?

When will we see each other again?

Is there another life or many lives after this one?  I feel as if I’ve known you forever.

Does it make a difference?

What do you wish happens?

Want to happen?                          

Afraid happens?

Can you feel within yourself some sense or the immortal?

I believe the gift of grief is that it forces me to contact

the immortal within myself.

And although I may still simply want to touch the people,

or conditions, for which I grieve,

in this other place, this inner realm of…eternity,

which lives almost – inside the pain,

there is an amazing transcendence…

(Like seeing some sparkling cobweb in the morning sunlight

when you’ve eaten too many hallucinogenics the night before

                                  …but less toxic…and more enduring…)

Simultaneously, grief pushes me toward this mysterious eternal,

and then it slaps me upside the head with the brevity of this moment.

A death always reminds me to live – to, somehow, live in a way that I can

grasp the present moment and hold it dear; it reminds me to truly attempt

to see and to cherish those I call my family and my friends.

Death reminds me to live and to love.

And grief reminds me that I have done so.