Even in laughter the heart may ache.

            Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief.” (Proverbs 14: 13 )

So true! Too painfully true!It's hard to "Amen" it, mainly because I don't want it to be true.  Sometimes a proverb's harsh grittiness forces me to retreat like a coward before a lion.  It's too close to real life, a reminder that for too long I've hidden behind rose-colored glasses like Doris Day trying to assume a Joan Crawford.role. It feels like I'm just realizing that no one lives happily ever after.  That if I read the scripts and followed the rules, my reward would be "no surprises," or at least not ones I could not handle. I really wasn't aware of the roles I'd taken on until my Baby Daughter died without warning.  What could have prepared me? Would having read Proverbs 14: 13 have done it?  What if I had known of Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 been enough? "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die"  

What difference would a dollop of philosophy, placed like whipped cream on jello, have made to my heart that had been splintered into a millionbilliontrillion irretrievable pieces? Would knowing and/or believing  that boundaries encase our lives---birth to death--- have healed it of the surprise that comes with loss any faster than not knowing it at all?  Can anything happen that removes the inevitability of  inevitability? After all, however we come to know it, we're told that the number of our days, is determined at conception.  Yet, we only halfheartedly believe it. Why we think we'll live forever, I  do not know. 

 There's something about deniability, though, that helps us to avoid the thought of mourning the imminence of our demise. Otherwise, we might spend the remaining days of our lives going through the grief and loss  process like the character in Groundhog Day.  It's probably alright to think about the death of a casual acquaintance with some frequency, but it's not the Politically Correct thing to do if its my only life, (think the soap opera, One Life to Live).  

Bittersweet.  How can I meld the bitterness of loss with the sweetness of memory and come out feeling, looking, or acting sane? I haven't been able to do it yet.

 How do I reconcile a bunch of sanctimonious sentiments with the wake-up-in-the-middle-of-night-pillow-tear-stained-shaking-from-nightmarish-pieces-of-remembrances, and look like I haven't lost a  12-round fight, again?

 How do I avoid the all-too frequent inability to look at her picture or pick up one of her journals and not feel like the coward I am because the pain smothers and stifles?

  

I go to sleep most nights listening to the great Preacher-Bluesman Al Green pleading, "Help me mend my broken heart and let me live again."

  Is that too much to ask? La-la-la-la-la.