five years and two days and one lesson

Grief is like



Grief is like...



I'm staring out the window. I'm half done the thought before I even realize I had started thinking.

There's no manipulating it.


There's no rewriting it or changing its nature or...


I'm looking down at my empty hands. The house is quiet.

There's no changing its nature or...



Both doors are open. Front and back.


We don't have a fence in the front. We haven't had the door open; standing open, thoughtlessly open, for seven years.


But it stands open now.

There is no changing its nature or cutting it short.

I was distantly surprised today when I felt, in a shock of painful, visceral recall - an ear-piercing moment of echoing, microphonic feedback from a past life - the need to hurt myself.

There is no escaping it.


There is no changing its nature or cutting it short. 

In fact, here is the truth.


Grief is like nothing.


Grief is itself.

Grief is itself, and only itself. It doesn't have a simile because it is the metaphor. And you cannot change it and you cannot move it and you cannot escape it, or negotiate or plead or remonstrate with it.


You can only feel it. You can only sit with it and in it and through it. You can only let it be in you and around and through and over you.

It is the sole defining process of our lives, the learning process, the growing process.


You are inside it, and filled with it, and whether your eyes are closed or open, you cannot see or find or imagine a way out. You can only wait.


And you must wait.



So I will wait.




Piper, I will miss you until I see you again.