LET'S FACE IT!

Let's face it head on: We all grieve.  Not just the loss of a loved one, an estranged one, or the loss of love, real or imagined.  A loyal pet---cat, dog, gerbil, parakeet, or even a goldfish.  A well-remembered childhood, a dismaying youth, an season buried too long ago to remember.  An disconcerting divorce, multiple marriages and dissolutions, relationships, colleagues, acquaintances, a BFF---myriad losses and accompanying sorrow that glue themselves to our very souls! We all grieve.

 Even when we don't realize it, don't know how to face or handle it, feel we deserve it, or don't deserve it,  we grieve.  Sometimes, remorselessly, consciously, subconsciously, ashamedly, unabashedly, we grieve.  We need help, but don't know how to ask for it, or ask but don't get it---not because the other  person appears mean-spirited, self-centered, or uncaring.  Sometimes,we think we no longer need it. But could it be that we do not know how to help, or even how to give! 

In this Season of Giving, do I know how to give from the heart? Am I willing to unclench lockjaw teeth and ask? Do I know how to take on another's pain, even if I 'm puzzled by it? Can I offer a silent declaration that conveys, "I understand."  Can I spare a touch on the shoulder, an understanding smile that communicates: "I've been there where you are right now? Can I acknowledge, "I'm still there; I just keep a painted face on  to mimic bravery, stoicism.  I'm groping and stumbling  in a night that's darker than a hundred midnights down in a cypress swamp. Can  I admit I need help, that's "It's me, it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer?"

No matter, the beat goes on, while I hold my breath for the next onslaught of pain.  I can't expect you to grieve like me, or to recognize my peculiar grief.  I can't expect you to know when I'm grieving; yet evidently I do.   How unfair to you! How unfair even to me.  Just respect that I'm navigating uncharted rapids and have been divested of my life jacket.  Especially when memories almost choke the breath out of me.  I walk around literally holding a breath I don't know I'm holding!  Which surely causes oxygen deprivation. Which is why I look like a distortion of "my old self."

I'm no longer who I used to be.  Like a featured bird, I've been moulting layers of "stuff" since the loss. Except I've had so many unacknowledged or unrecognized losses that I'm  not certain I can identify any one of them accurately!  Grief carries so many names and aliases.  Plus, the moulting sheds unevenly, producing bare spots and vulnerabilities.  Like in the heart. Like in the spirit.   Like in the mind and soul.  "Goodness gracious, "as my grandmother used to exclaim, the wonder is that I'm still walking upright.

"Come ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel; here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish: Earth has no sorrow that heav'n cannot heal,"