Embracing the Pain: Grief is a G.I.F.T.

When my 32 year old daughter died of a heroin overdose in 2009, I didn’t believe that grief was a gift. Prior to grief, you may have experienced sadness. Before grief took up residence in your house, you were unhappy. But you didn’t grieve in the biblical sense. You didn’t feel like cutting off all your hair, wearing sackcloth and ashes, staring into a mirror to see if you still had a soul. No. When grief takes up residence in your house, you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that even though your door locks are secure, a thief has broken in, because grief is the shadow. Now, beyond the shadow of a doubt, you are experiencing grief. Grief is a period of transformation, trial and tribulation. Remember this at all times. It will get you through your darkest hours. Grief is the great transformer and equalizer. No one is immune to it. No one.

I had to learn to embrace the pain. It took me over six years to begin to live again, to see that there was no magic formula. Each person walks the grief journey at their own pace, step at a time. We have to learn to embrace grief in our own way. To embrace grief as a g.i.f.t….to see grief is for tribute.

Grief is the tribute we give to the life that our loved one has lived. Because they lived their life, we pay tribute to their time on this earth. It seems odd that one would celebrate a life with grief, but in the beginning, this is the initiation that all souls do. Our grief is the very instrument that is the most meaningful tribute on earth. If someone dies and you are indifferent to their death, then they are a stranger to your heart and house. They have no meaning to you at all.

It is the grief you feel at a passing that is the fitting tribute to a life well lived. Yes, celebrations may come later, wakes and meals and remembering the good times. But in the first hours and days, it is the bone-crushing grief that is really the fitting tribute to your loved one.  Grief is the house built of gold and diamond, the cathedral inside your mind that goes up to the sky with spires and parapets, and that is built with the mortar of the aching love in your heart and soul, and whose roof is cemented with your tears.  This cathedral of grief is the tribute that no King can force his subjects to build; it is the tribute that every person who loves someone builds by themselves, psychic brick by brick.  Grief is a g.i.f.t: grief is a fitting tribute to the depth of the love you carry in your heart for your loved one.

When will you be yourself again? Some quiet afternoon, when you are sitting drinking tea, you might realize that your tribute of grief has built a new house that holds the memories of your loved one in a beautiful new edifice you’re both dwelling in.

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