What do I do with this crippling grief?

A polarising question to loss: “What do I do with this crippling grief?”

There is a simple answer to a question that is an eternal conundrum.  The answer is there is no answer.  Contemplating this leads us to a place of contemplation.  It leads to silence.  From silence comes respect for all things that do not have answers, for there are many problems of life that leave us without words or capacity of response.

To loss, there is no answer.  

And yet what is come of crippling grief?  

Silence.  Stillness.  Surrender.  

Acceptance as a response and goal of arrival.

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In the discombobulating reality of loss, grief invades as an ever-present foe, stealing all semblance of peace, hope and joy.  It causes us to distrust both present and future as we pine for the past.  It annihilates all confidence that happiness is possible again.  It’s like we’ve travelled through a portal to hell.  We envy what we once had.  It’s like a parallel universe where we disconnect from others who are untouched by loss, getting on with ‘their happy lives’.  It leaves us mystified and dread-filled.  In loss, a series of blows is meted out in a season of unparalleled injustice that seems to last beyond forever.

There is no making sense of it.  There are no words.  Anything ventured is a waste of space and energy.  And yet, somehow the answer is closer than ever before.  

In a topic that makes no sense, sense is finally made when we agree that searching is senseless.  When we sit in the pain agreeing to hope when the presence of hope is a void we find a way of putting one foot in front of another, even if that’s a dream of the hope we cannot let go of.

At least we can know that someone sees us in the crippling grief.  We connect to a world we hardly knew existed.  Strangely we feel home in places that were previously foreign.  

In your crippling grief know that there is a purpose in all things, and that that purpose may not reveal itself for some time; yet, surely as I’ve heard it countless times, that purpose will come.