I am well acquainted with grief.
It’s a diagnosis too far gone, a wooden casket lowered into the hard cold earth on a February morning.
An adulthood snatched from a promising young man. An afternoon call; a patriarch has fallen.
I’ve sat across from grief.
It has taken up space in my bones for years. Sometimes it’s a companion— silent but present and other times like a gut punch to the stomach, vomiting, wheeping, screaming out into the night: bleeding into the day.
Grief feels like vivid dreams, scents, smells and warm wrapped hugs, only to be shaken awake alone—tears streaming down your face.
I know grief.
I know the shattering of lives, moments stolen, a ripping away away of a world you once knew.
I’m acquainted with grief, barely able to articulate itself.
Grief haunts me.
It sits in my spirit, asking me to stuff it down, hide it away, to numb myself to feel only positivity and joy until it bubbles up to the surface of my soul, bare and visible to all.
