On Grief

On Grief

Grief never ends. It winds up somewhere within you. You can’t tell, but you’d feel it – a vacuum, a space, a loss. These are the best words that describe grief.

There are seven stages of grief. It starts with a shock or disbelief. Then you move on to denial, bargaining. Finally, end up with guilt, anger, and depression. Maybe after a while, we slide into acceptance/hope. Acceptance of the loss, but the pain never goes away.

A parent? Or best friend? Or siblings? You can’t make it up.

But no one prepares us for it. Not because they don’t want to but because there is no way to.
How do you tell someone to deal with the loss of their parent? To move on? To be brave? To Live?

Grief is chaotic, dangerous, and messy. It changes the mind and its owner. The memory of your loss may fade, but grief never goes away. It’s there, lurking, using every opportunity to remind you of that vacuum.

Maybe grief is a signal, a message of love. A reminder that someone or something that meant a lot is gone. Grief is a reflection of what or who we love. Perhaps it means no harm but a place to stay. Let it.

Maybe we should stop fighting grief. Maybe we should welcome it. It makes us human, after all. We can’t win it, but we can ensure it doesn’t overwhelm us. How? Maybe by thinking about the love we lost.

More so, grief is not to be compared. How I will grieve is different from how you would. It is never cast in stone.

We cannot know for sure.