Grief, In Pieces

Because we can never truly handle the enormity of the grief of loss, we deal only with its pieces. We deal with the sadnesses—in the plural.

We break grief down into tiny, deal-able chunks. Into little, handle-able fragments.

What I know for sure is that I am grateful for small, individual portions of grief, even when they arrive together. This is why I think mourning takes a lifetime. One does not really suffer through the colossal grief all at once and then get over it. He mourns because of the small sadnesses, each time dealing with a different piece of grief from the other time.

Some days, I grieve for pastries they loved and which I begin to wrap out of habit; for text messages I am terrified I might delete by accident, for TV ads I am very sure they would have laughed about. Some days, I grieve for God misunderstanding that we do not need them anymore; for friends who are impatient that we get over the loss; for verb forms in the past tense I use when I write about them;   

Some days, I grieve for my name when they used to say it, and for the fear that I would forget. I grieve for the mundane, for the everyday, for the lying down to bed, and then, for the getting up again.

I grieve for the many, many sadnesses that are omnipresent, that render me exhausted from all the toughening up that needs to be made, because there is Everyday that needs to be done.

I grieve that even despite my best efforts, some days, I rip apart at the seams of this Tough I put on, and the sadnesses creep in—not all at once, but in pieces.

I grieve, most especially, for the pieces that arrive on tiptoes, those sadnesses that burrow in a corner of the soul, where they linger and refuse to leave, and where they lay quiet and heavy and inconsolable.