If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of
loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes
and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to
cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake
each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize
their pain; we call their suffering a disease.
We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.
~ Cheryl Strayed
In September, I’m participating in the
Sapphire Even Day Blogging Challenge and
the Two Pages-A-Day Writing Challenge.
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ow quickly we forget.
It’s a defense
mechanism, really. If we remained in the
same exact state of grief as when our loved ones first left us, we would
probably go blind from crying.
So the gaping hole
left in our lives by the loss scars over, and we continue living our
lives. Scars are proof of a life well
lived and heart well loved. And it’s
natural to begin to see them through a haze ~ not quite being able to remember
the exact colour of their eyes, or the way their laugh filled a room. It doesn’t mean we have forgotten them, but that we’ve forgotten the first
stabbing pain of loss.
We have finally
integrated their leaving into our living.
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Image Credit: Visit
icandothings.com
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It’s been twelve years
since that horrific day in September. To
be honest, I can remember that I felt horrified and sad and shaken mostly
because I journaled about it ~ capturing the moment and the emotion in pen and
ink. And because there are pictures that
spark my memory.
Not because I still
feel the same. And not because that day
is always in the forefront of my memory banks.
It is the way of
grief. To help us cope with the initial
loss, the shock of never seeing our loved ones again. And hopefully, once we’ve been touched by the
hand of Death, we can remember to live life without fear and without
regret. Because we never know when or
how the end will come.
It’s what our loved
ones would say if we could hear them now.
Oremus pro invicem,
~ Mikaela
How do you
cope with the loss of a loved one? Do
you find that the pain eases a little each year? Are you afraid of forgetting them?
