Today’s prompt:
If you could tell people something, tell them what is true, what is true about grief and love and loss, something they do not know, or can’t know, what would it be? If you could address them, what would be said?
Grief–the wrenching, deep grief that is the eventual recessional to great, deep love–is not a mood or a feeling. It is intangible, but leaves a mark. It is pervasive, slipping around me, through me, into every corner, nook, and cranny of my life.
It lingers.
Right now, four months after my son’s suicide, grief is in charge of me. It decides what I can handle and when I can handle it. It decides–will we rise and walk together today, or will it crawl under the covers with me, make me stare at the wall for hours? Will I have a functional day, a day when I can pass for okay, slogging through but making it, or will I endure a day that chains me to the bumper and drags me across a desert?
It decides my day.
Grief haunts my dark bedroom, chasing my mind into anxious spirals. It flows from the shower head each morning, coating my body with indelible sorrow, sadness seeping into my pores.
It is stealthy.
It ambushes me in the grocery store, taunting me through the jars of hot salsa I no longer buy. It breaks the silence, whispering, “why . . . ” and “what if . . . ” in my solitary moments. It bumps against me in a crowd, picking my pocket and shoving me to the wall.
It violates.
Yet inexplicably, some days I cling to that grief, feeling a twisted comfort in a known tormentor. Some days, this monster grief is all I can find of my son.
It controls.
No, grief is not a mood or a feeling. It is an all-consuming tyrant of a syndrome that feels terminal–to my heart and soul if not my body–but sometimes, also my body.
It permeates.
Woods Writes 