H,
There is a lot of advice
about grief. It has this fantasy about it: the idea that it makes you wiser for
the pain. Is there any wisdom in pain? Probably that you do not want to feel
that way again. All the advertised cures are about the end of it. Time will
heal, eternity will correct all the crooked lines, and it will all make sense
in the end. It is all designed to keep you walking away from pain and into some
sort of hope.
Well, that is better than
the alternative. Stewing will do no good. The normal face of it, the everyday
nuts and bolts of feeling empty and bitter and sad is surely helped by time. You
forget that you are grieving sometimes. You make jokes, you dance, and you find
levity in moments away from your own consciousness. Then it hits again. There
is something at the back of your mind that comes slouching forward. It reminds
you that there is real loss here.
There is nothing wrong with
feeling this loss. Isn’t the most enigmatic phrase about Jesus this: He wept?  Not just for his friend but at the idea of
death and decay and loss and the great ravaging of the human experience by
original sin. It is absurd that we die, Camus says, and we come face to face
with it through grief. It cannot add up. It does not add up. It should not add
up.

I am ranting. Forgive me. Early
nights and early days. A little insomnia and the threat of thinking on these
things too much. Yet, there is a joy. A peace. The smell of water. If grief is
slouching then truth is walking confidently. I can see words again. Things
matter again. I can remember him and all that jazz we had once. I can close my
eyes and be on that farm again. Siblings beside me, his smile behind me and the
future all forward like eternity. Joy is knocking at my door every day. I will
learn to answer more.