Good Grief

Good grief. In my head I hear Charlie Brown saying this ... 

Grief, she is not good (imagine with your ears, a Spanish accent). Sorrow, he is not my friend (now a French accent). In any language, grief and sorrow are never good, they are soulful hardships that we pass through numbly, sometimes dumbly, always with a deep sense of pain that cannot be touched with the pleasure of food, drink, happy thoughts, good company, or any form of entertainment. 

I don't know what to do with myself dear reader. I walk, I eat, I hydrate, I see clients and talk to friends and I just plain old float, drifting along with no destination in sight, or need to establish one either. My get up and go has gotten up and gone. 

I miss my sister, and there is no way of getting around the feeling. The other day I heard the front door and my heart leapt in my chest, with the thought of it being her trying to enter in for one of her pop over visits. Alas, my hope was dashed, a millisecond later, when I remembered, once again, that it could not possibly be her, no matter how desperately I longed that it would be, her. 

Death is one of those knock out punch moments. It hits you and you find yourself flat out on the square ringed mat, wondering what was that? Getting up seems impossible and when you do, you think, for what? I'm gonna get hit again with that horrid knowing, that constant reminder, that she is gone and I'm still here, and I can't close the gap, I can't just open the door and say, Nells, and then hear one of her cockamamie stories while shaking my head and thinking, where does she come up with this stuff?! 

Yesterday, I shed not a tear, tonight though, I simply cannot stop thinking and missing and weeping. Maybe you are in this spot too, dear reader? If so, I am sorry you are suffering, and I won't say something stupid, like, Time will heal your heart, or This too shall pass, because fresh grief and sorrow do not like these words meant to mask the pain or supplant it somehow. 

All we have is getting used to not having the person we miss around. We pass our days and adjust, and that becomes a form of accepting. Isn't it wonderful, dear one, to miss another, to long for them, to wish they were near? How terrible if when you or I die, it is without sentiment, or sadness, or the longing that goes with a love tie that says, You belonged to me, and God gave us to one another. 

Jesus wept, this is my solace. He gets it. My lost and lonely feeling is not lost on him. The concept of him wiping away my tears after counting them all is a kindness I cannot fathom ... he counts our tears ... can you comprehend this truth, dear reader? If he counts ours, this means he counted those of my sister, and those that poured from the eyes of your dearly departed too. He was with my sister, and he was with your mother, father, uncle, aunt, cousin, brother, sister, husband, wife, and dare I say ... dare I say, child too, if you have suffered this almost unspeakable loss?

We are each alone, and with, and then alone again. Our only constant companion is God as ever present. He cannot be cruel or mean, because he is love. In the quiet, still, I move in the direction of looking to him for soothing and calm from my stormy unsettled feelings.

That is all, dear one. Just a little bit of me in the black and white world of print on paper. Missing, longing, and plain old sad. What's a gal to do?