On Love and Grief

The thing about death is everyone thinks it is contagious

Contagious like they can catch it, like because my sister dies if they get close to me their sister will die. Or sibling, or parent or friend or them or just death. 

Wow, dying. 

A fact of life, that all things are constantly going through, we cut flowers to put on our kitchen table and talk about their beauty, as they die. We throw them away in the garbage without mourning their beauty, replacing them with a  new fresh cut bunch. Dying. 


Another thing about death is when involved, it’s a battle of who is suffering the most. Like loss and mourning is somehow quantifiable. 


Can you can measure how heavy the weight in your chest is, the amount of tears, the tissues, as though whoever cries more or yells more or drinks more alcohol or hides or travels more. Is it quantifiable, like being the mother is worse than being the sister. 

How is that measurable? 


How is suffering something that can be weighed with your eye? 

Can it be measured at all?

You can feel the weight of the pain, the stickiness of it, the sorrow, the abyss it creates. Yet the darkness of competing or fathoming one suffers more in a family. 

 

Suffering and mourning are incomprehensible once experienced


Trauma, pain, love, suffering, joy. It’s your own measure of it. 



Death is 


Like a leaf 

Falling 

Falling 

Falling 


When it happens close to you so much self loss occurs

Memories shared run through your head, gestures of the person, their smile, their essence, their soul passes through your mind's eye

But when my sister died, my body went numb

My mind blank 

I longed for her hug 

What remains is the love that we shared 

And the desire  to nurture the love that continues in spirit.