Grief

Grief is a funny thing. Sitting here looking out the den window seeing leaves fall from one of the front yard trees I'm overwhelmed by it. It's been nearly 4 years since my best friend died. In that time I've lost my mother, father, another Karen and a high school friend who surprised us all taking his own life. You plod on because you must. When you were younger life was about immortality. Tragedy was contained in the family's "Dear Rodney" letters filled with sad news of ailments and passings. Those deaths were distant. Then you hit middle age and a few more intimate "Oh how sad" moments crept into your life. Still those passings were of people you really didn't know. They were blood but not your inner circle. Again you go forth. Suddenly death's brutal reality hits you full force. Death takes your best buddy. From then on your world of perception and being is altered. Nothing can return those you love to living, breathing entities. Some days you do see and hear them in your head. It's reassuring and yet not. A song, photograph, can be a cue. Boom, tears start. I thought of my Dad's quiet passing in the living room of the house he and Mom had been together in during their last years. I recall the resignation in his voice when 24 hours before he died he said aloud " I guess I didn't accomplish much." It broke my heart then and does so now. Have no clue who he was talking with, he'd been having "conversations" for a few days. Most comments he uttered made no sense but I knew he was visiting "others." At least

I understood that the anguish in his voice when he cried out "Mary, Mary," would soon be calmed. They would be a couple again. "The hour of departure has arrived and we go our separate ways. I to die and you to live. Which is better God only knows." Aristotle.