Grief and Joy

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.

What a time they have, these two

housed as they are in the same body.

- Mary Oliver, We Shake with Joy

I am in love with the Ocean

lifting her thousands of white hats

in the chop of the storm,

or lying smooth and blue, the

loveliest bed in the world.

In the personal life, there is

always grief more than enough,

a heart-load for each one of us

on the dusty road. I suppose

there is a reason for this, so I will be

patient, acquiescent. But I will live

nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting

equally in all the blast and welcome

of her sorrow less, salt self. 

- Mary Oliver, Ocean

"I'm a believer in meditation that isn't thought of as traditional meditation. It can be in the form of music or painting or walking or anything else that carries you into the flow state. Getting lost isn't actually getting lost. That's the paradox: getting lost is going inward. Getting lost is finding ourselves in a deeper capacity. Getting lost is sometimes essential to growth and ultimately a greater understanding." Victoria Erickson

I'm sitting again amongst the trees, rock, grass, bluebirds, ants and mountains. I have felt so lost lately. Lost in myself, lost in this world, riding the tide of grief. Questioning the duality of feeling so much pain and wondering if happiness or joy will exist along side such pain. That's the question in grief isn't it? We will feel this pain forever and joy will exist along side such pain. His loss created such a duality for our life that we must accept at some point. We must learn to live and grieve and accept what each of those states shall give us.

And we become lost. To find ourselves after his loss. After his life. To find love again. 

Life again.

Soul again.

Joy again.

And how all of that will exist alongside our grief. We were permanently changed the moment his heart ceased beating. While the world moves on and everyone goes back to exactly who they were, we do not. We are permanently altered and must find who we are now, not who we were then. 

Knowing and loving Kreed changed me into a much better person than I could have ever hoped to be. And his death has left me shattered, grasping at the shards of myself, trying desperately to put them back together, but instead each shard stabbed me, drawing blood, dripping down and swirling into unending pain. 

Until I realized, I could not put the shards back together. I was never, ever going to be that person again. Grief is transforming us into someone new, someone I have trouble recognizing. But the trouble isn't recognizing so much because I'm someone I don't know, but because I fight so hard against the new beginning and accepting the last ending. 

It wasn't supposed to end that way. We fought and fought and fought and always assumed the storm would pass, his dimples would come again and he would be ready for the next adventure. Until one day it wasn't. And we were left.

Shattered.

Tortured.

Grief-stricken.

Lost.

Missing.

No one realizes what it takes to accept the immense pain that will forever exist in your heart and then learn to allow happiness to exist next to that pain. Neighbors that must co-exist in some kind of neutral agreement that each will remain and live separate but equal lives. Our grief will rage on, turning and tumbling over and over, sometimes casting us to the larger waves and other times allowing us to float amongst the calmer water. But somehow, someway, as we continue on, a separate happiness and joy for life must exist. Each acknowledging the other.

I have struggled so long and so hard with accepting this duality within myself. Darkness comes over me and tells me this isn't so, that I can only feel this great pain and I must exist in this pain and allow for nothing else. The pain twists me.

Tortures me.

Empties me.

Buries me.

I fight and I fight against its completeness, the suffocating heaviness. But fighting only sends you deeper and darker. Until the day it comes. Acceptance. 

This is the new life.

This pain will always remain.

Happiness must exist with pain.

And that's okay.

And you stop fighting. You sit up on this ridge, feel the sun at your back, watch the bluebirds fly overhead, stare at the vast expanse of the mountains and revel in the beauty of this place. And breathe.

In.

Out.

Because we can. Because we're alive. Because we still have this one wild and precious life to live. And love this world again in a new way- the world our boy so loved.