grief

Some days just ache beyond anything articulate. There are tears for those day, I suppose. But that ache, it’s in the bones and marrow. The blood and cells. Everything inside knows, even when our outside doesn’t. Grief is a weasel of a word. 

I’ve spent four decades on this spinning ball. I can only hope I’m wiser for the wear.  We erode, like everything else. But the eternal parts, they are polished. My definitives grow more narrow as the questions grow broader. I think this is just the nature of being alive. How many, with one foot in the grave, know so much more in their unlearning of life? Frail and boney hands holding all the secrets. I think it’s backwards math — all of it. We work from the sum to find the solvents and solutes. Working in reverse from what happened, to how it happened, is some mad math. There’s a lot of figures to figure.

Taking a thing apart is probably the best way to learn how it works, though. This is why I pluck seed pods and inspect. What’s inside of life? What makes it grow? What’s inside the heart of each matter, and what makes it beat? I like to think my curious brain has kept me alive, simply for my earnest to know what’s on the other side. We have to stay curious, or we die for lack of wonder and fascination. I don’t think I’ve ever lived a moment bored. I don’t even understand boredom. There is too much to discover even in the most bleak and mundane. 

I guess I figure that grief is proportionate to loss, and loss is proportionate to what was gained. I believe the gain is always meant to be greater, though. I just do. No matter how deeply you grieve a thing, it is still only the first few pages of what can be written. Having touched some seemingly bottomless despair, I still remain convinced that the measure of goodness that can buoy up is miles beyond that depth. 

I feel I have grieved myself back to Eden’s gate at times. Back to the very beginning of it all. It seems to unravel that far, anyhow. I suppose there will always be a longing for how it was first intended to be. And yet, even there, a threat resided, then manifested, and then set us spiraling down and out ever since. I don’t think I’ll ever quit longing for Eden, where it was all set right for a short while. I think I was made for the garden: for safety, and keeping, and cherishing.

My words are lamenting but my heart is yet hoping. Hope is a lot like staying curious: it wants to know what’s on the other side, and believes it is good.