A note on grief
“When we love someone, we unwittingly sign up for grief. That’s simply how life is and not one of us gets to escape it. (I don’t think I would want to, even if I could, not now.) Love collects in the end, it always does, but even then, love gives more than it takes.
Grieving can feel like a balancing act between acceptance and rage. It takes years - sometimes longer - to be able to accept our losses, to metabolize them into our lives, to find the blessings in the memories.
In the aftermath of loss, it can take a long time for the love and the joy and the gratitude to return. (Sometimes it never does.) Love lasts longest. By this point, I also know that love doesn’t have much to do with our notions of linear time, not in the end. However long it takes is how long it takes.
And so we remember best through the most ordinary altars of our lives. Music, flowers, creatures, food, art, beauty, water, and land. I have never believed that time heals all wounds but I’ll be darned, it does open up the space for our memories to become an old friend, rather just than a source of pain.” — Sarah Bessey
I attended a funeral on Saturday, via streaming, and will attend another this coming Saturday, in person. Love and loss go hand in hand, which is a beautiful and miserable lesson. Both/And.
Both of these particular women had a way of making people feel loved, accepted, heard, and cared for. Their legacies are much more than even that, of course, but when people remember them — once the searing pain of their absence lessens — a comforting warmth will remain. The warmth of gratitude and love for having known them, for the blessing of remembering them.
xo,
Beth