Grief Needs Your Tenderness
Now that I know how to grieve (when my mother died, I put it in a trunk with outgrown toys. Brand new eleven, I was stoic and feisty and not about to get all teary-eyed), there’s no escaping it.
Grief is not a project, worked on and completed. It cannot be locked away. It comes in waves, at inconvenient times. It embarrasses, with its sudden display of emotion.
Grief needs your tenderness and compassion. “Get over it now” is not kind or helpful. There’s no schedule to compute. Feelings are amorphous, impossible to measure. One minute I am basking in the sunny garden, the next, stricken over the fading of the Peonies, petals blown and scattered (gather the rosebuds while ye may).
I keep saying, “Beauty is the antidote to suffering” and forget what I’ve come to know and understand about my life. Beauty is not luxury but necessity, and creating is not a ‘hobby’ but the soul’s mission. I am here to make the world more beautiful, to give to others, something of myself, and to leave behind, something worth remembering. I must cherish these growing older days, learn and teach a new respect for the wisdom of those who have been here the longest; our elders, our guides, our beautiful inspiration.
LBM 6/17/2020
