To grieve or not to grieve .....

..... that is the question. 

Actually, no it isn't ..... I just couldn't come up with a better title at the moment.

Here's what I know ---

it's definitely a verb.  

Yes, indeed.

And a very active one at that.

And it strikes more people than I ever realized.

I think that's because we are taught, in this culture, to not look at grief.

We turn away from it.

Maybe if we look at it too long we'll "catch it".

And so we don't.  

Until .....

we do.

And when we finally SEE grief ..... our eyes are opened.

Then we really SEE it.  And see that it's everywhere.

Grief is a loss.  Not always of the same people or things, but it's still a loss.

 There are many, many people out there who have lost.

We may not be experiencing the same loss, but we are experiencing the worst thing about grief.

The very worst thing:

The death of a dream.

Whether the loss is a job, a child, a spouse, a place called home, a poor choice, a bad decision, a marriage, a relationship, a family member, a friend ......... 

no matter what ......

it is the death of a dream.

And that, my friends, is a very, very difficult thing to lose.

Or to recover from.

What else is grief/grieving?

Sneaky.

Hard.

Strong.

Unrelenting.

Exhausting.

Frustrating.

All-encompassing.

Sometimes deadly.

Suffocating.

Overwhelming.

Selfish.

Blinding.

Inconsistent in its consistency.

Horrific.

Empowering.

Strengthening.

Freeing.

Relationship growing.

Eye opening.

Bonding.

Faith strengthening.

Is it all of that and more.  

You do not choose it .... it chooses you.  

You can't control it's strength and power.

And I think that it never completely lets go.

But .....

the last 7 words on that list are not things that grief pours over and into you.

Unless you CHOOSE them.  

Sometime.

In the distance.

But you can choose.

Or ....

not.

     This has been a quiet day.  Not an unpleasant day, but a blue one.  Son #1 is on his way back to school and I miss him very much.

The day was blue before he left.

I was looking at pictures of the puppies (to post for the previous entry) and wondering why I was feeling blue ...... why the tears are near the surface again.

And then I glanced down at the date on my calendar.

And thought, "There ya go."

I hadn't thought of it before this afternoon.  

So even though I feel like crying for "no reason at all" ......

I didn't realize it was coming.

And I think that's something.

I wanted to share this song with you because it has spoken to me several times over the past few weeks.

I couldn't decide whether to just post the song or the video.

I want you to hear the words and I didn't want the video to get in the way because it's not my situation.

But then I thought ...... "Well, it kinda is."

So here you go.