I woke up at 5:00 this morning and could not get back to sleep. It might have had something to do with the 8-year-old child that had made his way into my bed and the small of my back. Who knows? All I am certain of is that I was not going back to sleep. I got up, wandered around the house for a bit, and finally resolved myself to the fact that I should go ahead and get started on breakfast. If I cannot sleep, I might as well be productive.
Life is so fragile. To think that you can kiss someone goodnight and not have them with you in the morning is a little bit frightening to me.
Dealing with death is one of the hardest and most awkward of our emotions to handle. Joy is easy. You can celebrate it with each other. Even anger is a manageable emotion. However, what do you do with grief? How do you console someone who is at an extreme loss? What do you say? How do you deal with it yourself? Is it okay to just come completely undone over this or do we have to hold ourselves together?
It is okay to just shut down for a while and mourn. Let the memories of your lost one monopolize the space in your mind. Everything else can go on the back burner for a while. Life really will stop for you during this process and those around you, if they are decent people, will allow you the time you need to just lose yourself.
We can mourn in sadness. We are permitted in this moment to be sad. We can just lay down and allow ourselves to be overwhelmed. I think the hard truth about death is that it is simply more than we can handle. None of us have power over it. We cannot control it. Time heals and the love and memories of the person who we have lost will give us the closure that we will never receive by trying to fake it.
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