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Only last month one of my closest friends pointed out to me that of everyone in our group, I have invited him to the most number of funerals.
I am well acquainted with grief, not just in my personal life but in my professional space too. I have held the hands of dying men while consoling their broken hearted wives, and battled hopelessly to save a child as her mother clutched frantically to her lifeless body
Death is a part of life.
We are all born.
We all live.
We will all die.
No one gets out of this alive.
We are all born.
We all live.
We will all die.
No one gets out of this alive.
So since we know that death is inevitable, why does it shake us so deeply when it happens, why do our hearts break irreparably why do our lives change so irrevocably?
I asked myself this question over and over again these past few weeks after once again my family was visited with grief when my older bother died. He had been unwell and you could say his passing was to be expected, but it broke me more than I could explain
I was the one who prepared everyone else for this eventuality, but somehow for me, the reality of his death was all too difficult to bear.
Last week, after months of introspection, I think I have figured out, at least for me, why it feels so heart wrentching.
It is not death that hurts.
I know death. I work in a building where he lurks in corners, teasing the elderly and taunting the young. I have faced him down at several crash calls and prayer vigils and won. I have lost to him at many besides and gravesides.
I know death. I work in a building where he lurks in corners, teasing the elderly and taunting the young. I have faced him down at several crash calls and prayer vigils and won. I have lost to him at many besides and gravesides.
It is loss that hurts.
The knowing that someone or something that was once ours is ours no longer. Taken from us, stolen from us, against our will. Torn from our reality, erased from our present, relegated from our hands to our memories
The knowing that someone or something that was once ours is ours no longer. Taken from us, stolen from us, against our will. Torn from our reality, erased from our present, relegated from our hands to our memories
It is the future we would never have that hurts.
The knowing that we will have moments in our tomorrow that won't have them in it. That we will be creating new memories that they would be absent from. That the person we would have become had they still been her would never come
The knowing that we will have moments in our tomorrow that won't have them in it. That we will be creating new memories that they would be absent from. That the person we would have become had they still been her would never come
It is the dying that hurts, not the death.
For in the dying we realise that we too will someday die and that life is fleeting and that pain is senseless and that love is all that we have and all that ever mattered in the end
For in the dying we realise that we too will someday die and that life is fleeting and that pain is senseless and that love is all that we have and all that ever mattered in the end
It is the loss, upon loss, upon loss, and the pain that comes before the last hurt has been healed, it is the tearing open of barely healed wounds with rusty blades laced with salt. It is the relentless crashing of the waves, not letting up, not letting go, one after the other...
