The Comfort Of Grief

I once knew a man. He felt like home and I liked to be near him. He was sharp though, spiky. His defenses were strong, there was no way in. No way past the armor that protected him. He liked to be near me too, but he hurt and he threw that hurt out into the world, not caring where it landed or who it hit. I stopped liking being near him.

And then his father died, and piece by piece his armor fell away, the spikes ground down, the sharpness softened and then I started to feel like home to him too.

We'd settled our heavy heads on each other’s shoulders, finding peace in the silence that held us. Smiling, gently holding onto each other whilst the turbulent waters of life whirled around us.

We would see each other occasionally, but being in different countries, different worlds and with my defenses still ready to rise at a moment's notice, it couldn’t last. I still think of him sometimes. Home.

When my own father died, I remembered this man again.

After 6 months of barely existing, Grief showed up in my life. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me under. I needed her. I yearned for her and I surrendered to her. She took me in her arms and drowned me, packing my eyes and my lungs and my heart with soft cotton wool. I felt her brush aside my defenses - the spikes, and my reasons for protecting myself against the world. As I lay in her embrace she showed me what was real, and what wasn’t.

She still visits and makes me rest when I get too confused about how this world works. She pulls me back, breaks my heart over and over again until the brittleness gives way to softness and I can breathe again, unbound and unprotected, safe in my rawness.

She wraps her arms around me and whispers in my ear ‘all of this ends my love.’ She rocks me gently as the words sink into my body and mind. This achingly beautiful, short, sweetest-upon-sweet, painful life ends. Everyone and everything we love will fade from our lives and all of the defenses in the world can’t stop that from happening.

She reminds me that keeping out the love in the world serves no purpose, except to cause myself hurt.

She makes sure that I know that there is no hope of escaping death and loss, no means of preventing it. ‘This all ends,’ she repeats softly, holding me fast, ‘feel it all, my love.' She hides nothing from me.

As I curl up, exhausted in her arms, the absence of hope gives way to something else; Here and Now. A place where there is no need for hope, no need for sharp spikes. Where there is nothing to defend ourselves from.

The realisation arises that we think that we are protecting ourselves from hurt, when we’re not. We’re guarding ourselves against love. We’re stopping the very thing that we have been put on this earth to do - to live, to love. To look with eyes afresh on our brief existence and to decide to love with our hearts wide-open, eyes brimming with unshed tears.

This is the gift that Grief brings with her, the force that surges through your body and mind, demanding your surrender, welcoming you into her arms where she strips you bare, breaks your heart and sends you back to the world new, raw, open, softer, knowing, opening your eyes to what is real, what is here, now.

Grief, gentle and relentless in her destruction.

Let her break you, every time.