a letter to grief
Dear Friend,
I am so very sorry that you have a reason to grieve.
But do not feel sorry for feeling that grief.
For that grief is love. Your grief is a million little explosions within your heart and soul, set off by the buttons that we humans fear most; loss and death.
But does it not make this short life we have all the more beautiful because there is only a finite amount of it? Like knowing that we only truly appreciate the warm sun after a long, cold winter. Like knowing that our favorite dessert is special to us because we can only eat so much of it at once and must wait and be patient to taste it again. Like knowing that we only know the light because we know the dark.
There is a saying that stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. “Grief is just love with no place to go.” And there are few truer explanations than that.
That ache in your stomach, that lump that has made its home in your throat, the tears that sting and burn your eyes, the rasp of your trying-to-hold-them-back breath, and the terrible empty space you feel in your chest... that was the burst of a dam within your heart that reserved and kept that love for that person.
And now it is leaking, gushing out, crashing down and it feels like it is destroying everything in its path. And it hurts beyond description, and it feels uncontrollable, and it doesn’t feel human, this grief that you feel. So you want to stop it. You want to patch it up, clot the wound, and distract yourself from the pain of love that is lost within you with nowhere to go.
But it isn’t lost. For it is pouring out and into you. That love, all that beautiful love you kept for that person isn’t gone because they are. It is simply returning home. To you. And so they will never be truly lost.
So let it ooze. Let it drip. Let it flood. You mustn’t stop its journey back to the source. Let that love, that love that belongs to that person, fill you up and be at home within you, keeping that memory alive with every beat of your heart. “I love, I love, I love...” For you are a creature of love, as we all are. That is our purpose. But love and loss are two sides of the same coin, a coin that we cannot stop from flipping throughout our lives. It is the risk we must take to feel the indescribable, necessary, life-giving, soul-crushing, tingling, soaring, infinite feeling that is love. “I lost, I lost, I lost…” might be your heart’s beat now, dear friend. But it keeps your heart beating and beneath it, if you listen closely, you will hear what it is truly saying. “I lost but I still love, I lost but I still love, I lost but I still love.” You have felt loss but you will always feel love.
And remember… that grief is nothing but a beautiful amalgam of the feelings you felt for the person you are missing, the entire spectrum of human emotion. Let yourself feel for that means you are alive, as terrible as life can be. To live is to suffer. It is a contract each of us agrees to as we come into this world. Honor the one you lost by suffering because it means you are living, living for them, living as they would want you to, living as you would want your loved ones to when you are here no more.
So do not shame yourself for the feelings you have or how you need to feel them. Healing is messy. Love is messy. All that messiness is so human and it is beautiful. You honor the one you lost by not pretending that you aren’t human and thus completely and utterly incapable of being perfect. You honor yourself, you honor them, and you honor the love you felt by keeping it alive with how you feel.
Your grief is love. Let that love out all over the place.