“Grief is a wave and a web of emotions intricate and delicate as the love that once was”

Today I found out that my paternal uncle my father’s eldest brother passed away unexpectedly this weekend. Suddenly, my own grief revisited. It has been five years since my father’s untimely death and today felt like it just happened. I woke up finding out the news of my uncle’s passing by reading a post on my social media. Reading it like a headline of news I felt a rush of adrenaline surge. I felt panic and a desire to be with family – to connect. I immediately reached for the phone.

Grief can trigger grief and life can change in an instant. Like a flash our memories flood like a Kodachrome. In the midst there are tears and laughter and crazy family stories. There is a flood. An old familiar wave emerges.

Grief and death remind us of what is important in our lives. Gone is the superficial postering of a life well lived. We are human and we enter this world with nothing and leave it as such.
We arrive and leave alone.

Those that are left behind become a life legacy. Today I shared with my family my dreams and vision for tomorrow.

I’m ready to leave the city I live in and my current job and move across the country to be with the ones I love -my own grandchildren. I share this news with my friends and family.

This pandemic has cleared the cobwebs from my eyes and I now see clearly.

I see what lies before me. Hope, yes hope lies before me and a new life surrounded by the ones I love. In so many ways I feel like I’ve lived my life backwards. Perhaps this is the clearing gifts of grief.

Realizing that what one has worked so hard for really doesn’t matter after all. Grief offers many gifts. We don’t realize it at the time. The gifts of grief help us grow and move forward accepting and integrating.

There are many people that try to numb the  pain. They do not want to feel. In suppression  there is a desire to get through without feeling all of the waves of grief. This is impossible and the only way through is through.

Today I laughed and cried with the newly bereaved and I let the memories flood.
The memories of family and love.

My uncle was a kind soft spoken man. He loved his family and he was an excellent brother and father figure for my father who grew up fatherless.

My uncle was both a brother and a Dad to my father and he essentially taught him how to be Dad. I am forever grateful!  My Father was the best parent that a girl could ever have.

Grief was allowed to visit again today and I offered gratitude and love for grief is love.  I am reminded that I am not alone and family and friends are always near. Grief reminds me that life is now and I gently exhale.