While the page went quiet for a while, as life changes required me to give a focused energy on things other than my writing, it is the death of a friend that brings me back to the reminder that we only have one chance at this life… and if I am to write, I need to keep writing.
So today, I am here to remind you to embrace your grief, embrace the unfairness of life, embrace the brutalness of your pains, and embrace your loved ones.
———————
Cherish
Death reminds us of death.
Death has a way of reminding us things we try to forget.
Death reminds us the clock is ticking on all of us.
Death makes no allowance for the good among us.
I have been to a young child’s funeral.
I have been to teenagers’.
I have been to adults’ – young ones, middle aged, and old ones.
I have known grief from up close, and from a far outside the internal circle.
Accidents, cancers, heart attacks, random diseases, old age, suicide, all take people I love.
The unfairness of it all.
The questioning of it.
The why’s?
The heart attacks don’t take out the bullies, they take out the good dads.
The cars accidents don’t take evil murders, they take our children.
The cancers don’t touch the deserving, they inflict our mothers.
The depression doesn’t take the abusive narcissists, it takes our siblings.
Was the last conversation I had with that one, uplighting?
Did I remember to say I love you when I should have?
Did I tell them what they meant to me?
Did they know much joy they brought into my life?
There is no silver lining.
We search for hidden meanings.
We search for the details, hoping it makes sense of the senseless.
Some say “it is god’s will”, others say “bad things happen to good people.”
The only possible lesson we take away,
Is that life is preciously short.
Preciously fragile.
The small stuff does not matter.
But the last words I say to my daughter every day do matter.
The friends I have lost touch with over the years,
Will their death cut me knowing I should have been there?
Will my death matter to them?
The people who have left my orbit, they all left a mark.
The coworkers who I enjoyed, suddenly out of reach.
The young people who didn’t get to see what they could be.
The family members whose absence rattle me every day.
We don’t talk about the grief that haunt us,
that comes over us in waves and knocks us to our knees,
and ebbs and flows with the songs on the radio and the smells of a particular cologne.
We don’t talk about the ache that hits us when you forget you can’t call that person.
We tell each other to be strong.
We tell each other “it will be okay.”
But it will never be okay – there will always be the “before” and the “after.”
A distinct change in who we are.
The pain of death does not go away, it changes.
Morphs into a more conformable grief.
Grief that invites itself in, not only on the holidays, but on the random Tuesdays.
And it feels like it is always a random Tuesday.
The memories we share about them will keep them alive.
And the telling of our pain is the only way we will keep the lesson alive.
Today is a gift.
Cherish it, love hard.
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