Grieving in Pieces

 It has been just a month or so when the cold earth claimed your beloved after fifty years of blissful wedded life.  I can feel the loss and the hurt.  I can feel the tangled confusion of emotions; all at once joyful for given the many years of companionship, yet stabbing like a hot knife to the heart for it meant life has changed forever.  

I saw how you gave away your possessions to loved ones to find these a new home, determined as you are to sell the house that with you alone in it seems like an endless hallway of memories.  I know there was this drive to start to rebuild life, to find the courage to begin all over again carrying with it all the hopes you hold for some semblance of a future.  

Slow down as you are moving frenetically through the sorrow, burying the emotions so deeply where it cannot touch your heart.  But it is there brewing in its dormancy waiting to surprise you when least expected.  When you are alone and life finally caught up with all the hustle and bustle of the living, it is in its midst when you will take stock and reflect about what just happened.

The tears will come with a vengeance; not with a whimper but with the howling, endless guttural sobbing, wailing, and lamenting.  Let the warm mist cover your face, and don't hold back.  Give yourself the time to pierce the vale of tears to remember.  Let your sorrow pass through the moments of grief.  It will be your friend for as long as you embrace the thought that it is in mourning that you will find comfort and recompense.

When the spasm of pain loosens its tightened grip, life begins again with a new purpose.