Grief - The Unwanted Guest
“My eye grows dim because of grief; it grows old because of all my enemies.” Psalm 6:7
My mother passed away in 1985, and I haven’t seen life the same since. The grief that entered my life that year made me a different person as of the moment she left this earth. My eye did indeed grow dim because of grief…
… but I don’t think grief stops there. It rather spiders out into areas of life -of living- without our knowledge of it doing so, and without our intent.
As of 1985, my life became a series of head-on collisions with people -in relationships, with friends, with strangers and jobs. I’ve always seen myself as a peaceful and complacent person, and yet somehow I managed to make more enemies, and burn more bridges than I ever even thought I was capable of doing.
After a decade or so of this, I did begin to feel very old. At the age of forty, I felt as if I’d lived multiple lifetimes; and yet none of them felt like my own.
I think grief takes on “lives” of it’s own when we’re unable, or unwilling to accept and deal with circumstances as they are. My mother’s death was sudden, and by no means natural. I could not accept it as a fair and just reality in my life. And yet still, the person I became in the aftermath was the embodiment of this same injustice; this same injustice that I couldn’t accept as part of my life.
The good news is, life does go on with or without our acceptance. And it is right there, on the path, waiting for us -looking us square in the eye- when we finally and eventually turn around to face it.
Life takes no prisoners. She takes no hostages. So if you’re waiting, or needing to be swept off your feet by some man, or woman, or place, or job, you better take a good look in the mirror and make sure it’s really “You” going through those motions, and not some lost character from your past.
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