The Choice Is Yours

The coldest days of winter have made the trees outside skinny and bare, and I’ve been spending lots of time bundled in flannel and wool, grateful for the warmth of my home, completely spoiled by my thermostat that works overtime during the bitterest cold nights.

While I’ve been cozy in my privilege of wintery warmth, the quiet has fueled reflection of an era that felt more like an inferno, even though the heat of that season kept me frozen in place. As it tends to do, the passage of the wintering season has shed meaning for a time when the living was blanketed by grief—an era, I can report, that aged me a hundred seasons at once.

Here’s what I think about it now…

Grief is a feeling. You can quite literally feel the ache of it. I feel it mostly in my chest and in my hips. We hold our issues in our tissues, and grief is as sticky and heavy as it gets.

Grief is not linear. There are days when the sticky heaviness seems to dissipate and lessen. There are days when the weight sits on top of you, forcing you to be still.

Grief follows no schedule. As Trevor Hall sings to us, you can’t rush your healing. Even when you’ve made it through, and you’ve moved on, grief can show up at your doorstep, uninvited, keeping you inside for a while.

Grief is not contagious. While those around you may sympathize with your sorrow, or even empathize with your pain, your grief is yours alone. What you feel does not carbon copy to another person, and your grief cannot be interpreted through somebody else’s opinion.

Grief is as much physical as it is mental as it is emotional. It penetrates our body in a multitude of ways, presenting as aches, anger, malaise, fear, frustration, fog, and so on.

Grief is multi-faceted. As soon as you try to force it into a box, it begins to find another source to move through. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t moving, inhabiting.

Grief can be a good friend. I dream of my grandmother often. Each time I’m looking for her and just as I find her, I wake up. I wake up wrapped in grief, in the sorrow of her absence. Then again, the warmth of her memory is what is blanketing me, and if I can’t have her to touch and hold I will gladly take the aching. A life with no ache for love is a life I can’t bear to imagine.

Grief does not discriminate. Daily I interact with others and am reminded that we all hold our own worlds within. A smiling face isn’t always an indicator of joy—sometimes there is pain behind the facade. We can never know what someone else is carrying. All the more reason to be gentle with ourselves and others.

Grief cannot be measured. It cannot be cured by prescription. It does not follow a templated treatment plan. Grief is fluid and also formative. We should be so wise as allow grief to teach us and empower us.

Grief cannot be stolen. And also, grief cannot be discarded. Sure, you can numb your pain, though it will find its way through you. It will seep through no matter how hard you try to paint over it. It is infinitely strong. We are fools to try to outmaneuver it.

Grief is not a monster, though at certain stages it can feel overwhelming and unfair and ugly. The polar opposite of grief is cheerfulness—every day I search for cheerfulness. Even in the midst of grief, cheerfulness always finds the light.

Grief is inevitable. It is part of the human condition to experience sorrow, though it is a choice to experience suffering. The distinction between sorrow and suffering, then, is our constant endeavor. Grief can make you bitter, or it can allow you to live bigger. The choice is yours.

Choose well.
Be well.
Stay warm.

x,
lk

Photo: The bareness of winter, somewhere in South Carolina