Life, as a whole, is nothing more
than an everyday pattern of loss.

Think about it:
we will never get this moment back.
You are reading or listening to these words for the first time
and you will never get to hear them
for the first time
again. That is loss, and that loss
is a part of life.

But when first there is this
love, this all-encompassing,
desperately grasping, clinging, attaching
love which you hold deep within your heart,
and then you lose it - that is when
Grief shows up at your front door. And
Grief is often a part of life, as well,
except, different.

Very, very
different.

Grief grabs you by the throat;
with rough hands and hungry eyes,
he digs his claws deep into the flesh on your neck
to remind you that you lost this love
you once felt in your chest.
Grief tries to bleed you dry.
He is mean, he is rough, he is
razor blades and sharp edges and
bare feet on hot coals.

But Grief is also soft.
He has gentle hands, loving hands,
hands that rub your back;
arms that reach around and hold your body,
tight but not too tight -
a hug which says that
it’s okay to be sad. An embrace that says,
lean into me - “I am
Grief, and there was love so strong
beating inside of your chest and now
it’s suddenly gone, and
I have come to stitch the wounds
which opened up your skin when the love
crawled out and was buried
six feet deep.”

Grief is rough, and Grief is gentle, and
Grief doesn’t leave until
you’re ready for him to go.
You can pack his suitcase to the brim -
slit a hole in his mattress and rip up his sheets -
break his bones and push him off of a cliff but he
will still be there. Invincible. He will still
stay put in your bones until the love
is back inside of the cracks he is filling.
Even then, he will still be near enough
to come when he hears you calling.

And even when he is rough,
filling your body with wet cement and
forcing you still until it dries
so you cannot lift even a finger
to get yourself up out of bed,
he does not exist to end you;
he does not exist for you to stay put inside your pain,
to live inside the cracks that the love left
when it broke you open with sadness.
Grief is there to force you to see that
this love never has to leave.

Grief is there to show you that
when this all encompassing, clinging, attaching, enormous, beautifully painful love
which you think has left your chest and
your soul, breaking open
your rib cage and your skin to escape
and leave you empty,
exits your body and flies away,
it hasn’t. It hasn’t flown away,
it hasn’t broken you open and it hasn’t left you empty.
The love never left, and
the love never needs to leave at all.

Loss is a part of life;
every minute of every day is a moment
which will never return.
We will soon lose this moment -
where you and I share in my words,
share in the pain that we feel from
having Grief inject himself into our veins
and flow through our blood, numbing us to any new love
with his novocaine -
this moment will end and that
is loss.
And tomorrow there will no longer be
a yesterday and in
one year we may not even remember
this moment - but
that is the difference between
Loss, and Grief.

Everyday we will grieve;
flowers will remind us of the grave which we know
lives the perceived-dead love which we held in our chest for so long.
A crack in the sidewalk will remind us of
cracked chalk from childhood
which we colored into the concrete on
a beautiful summer Saturday.
Every moment, we will grieve.

Grief means that something important
once existed and that
alone is why he will not leave.
That is why we can pack Grief’s suitcase,
push him off a fucking cliff, cut into his veins
to bleed him dry before he can first bleed US dry;
because there was once a life
which lived inside us, once a soul
which held our heart inside its palm, his
palm, her palm;
Love.

There was once this love which laid
inside of someone else’s heart,
and Grief says - “hey,
don’t you ever forget that
even on the days when my hands are rough
and grab you by the wrists,
tugging on your heartstrings - the ones
connected to your tear ducts which
remind you that you lost something
so dear and deep engraved into your soul - I only do it
so that you can remember
how much you once loved, and how much love
you still are capable of.”

Grief will hurt you, and
crack your bones and push you off your feet,
scraping your knees on the concrete,
but he will also bandage up the wounds,
he will hold your hand, rub your back,
embrace you when you think you have nothing left,
because out of everything that he holds,
Grief knows that he is different
from a casual, everyday loss;

Grief knows that sometimes,
we have bigger cracks inside our bones that need sealing -
and the wet cement which heavies us
and forces us to cry for days in our bed
and convinces us that this is Grief being rough,
tough, trying to further our sorrow -
all he is truly doing is attempting to heal theses leftover broken parts of us.

The love will never leave us.
Sometimes we need to cry and
scream and karate chop our Grief before
we can remember how to breathe;
before we can remember how it felt
to love so deeply, it caused us to feel
this broken open, cracked rib cage sorrow
so intensely.

Let yourself drown inside of
the pain; inside the grief, inside the loss of everyday life, and the loss
of the love which you believe you cannot resuscitate.
And then,
let yourself breathe relief inside the love
that still beats inside your heart;
let it remind you that there is so much
love still left inside of your fragile, brave soul and you will always have
the capacity of feeling it at its fully intensity.

It feels good when the
drowning in an ocean of pain fades to
breathing in an atmosphere encased in healing.
There is time to grieve, and you will do it
everyday.
But please, hold onto Grief’s hand,
because it is time to heal, and
without his rough and gentle touch,
drowning is inevitable.
You will heal as you grieve and
letting go will not be linear,
but there will be such beauty in its unstable journey
through your mind to your heart to your
cracked bones to your broken open rib cage
to your soul.

We will heal, love, grieve,
break the seam of our own hearts and
stitch them back together with the
thread of our past and present sorrows,
and we will live.