A Grief Dismissed

I've a less than 48-hour old grief. A fresh wound, but old enough that I can begin to write about it.

I skirt carefully around my grief, poking it a little, making concentric circles, closer and closer in, until I stare at it, peering at its form. But it's only for a few minutes, before I have to withdraw.

The trouble with grief is that of course one can't just look at it. One doesn't walk around it as if at a museum, studying an exhibit encased in a glass box. Grief is a writhing, living, growing thing. One has to handle it, touch it, throw it about.

Only, it's bigger than me, more like a body of water. I have to enter into its silent immensity. I hold myself there, forcing myself to sit still in its centre. I can only manage a few moments. Like holding your breath under water. Grief is that split second just before you have to resurface: your lungs are almost out of air, but still holding out, and there's a panicked moment of paralysis, before your legs wake up, and propels you out of the water.

It's momentary, quick jerks of intense anguish. Impossible to sustain, even if I am willing to sustain them. Very quickly my mind turns to self-mockery, or tries to rationalise the situation. Reason acts as rudder, pushing distance between me and memory. Away from raw pain.

It's all relative, I know. I've just read the blogs of two families who have lost loved ones. A wife and a son, both to cancer. What do I know of such loss? What is my "loss" in comparison? A loss of future hope, a mirage of a dream. Nothing but foolish musings for addled brains.