The Worst of Grief

Acute Grief is a god of pain that makes each enduring second worse than the last. As she blows in hard against the sails of the ever-burgeoning awareness of the conscious mind as it awakens – from the slumber of an oblivion where pain is unknown – there exist caverns for numbness which are altogether too hard to reach. Even in numbness there is pain; a shut-in type of pain that cannot be expressed, and that just simply is – it is what it is and it takes exactly what it takes.

The worst of grief occurs not only in the instant of blindsiding news, but it recurs and recurs, sometimes with the greatest of despair, even months or years after the initial loss(es) were experienced.

The worst of grief is gross injustice on the human psyche and on the heart that seems broken ever worse the longer it endures it. It seems like it at the time.

Intermittent in its coming, but it stays as it likes and it comes without any announcement, and, even if we have anticipated it, we are stricken by something we know really nothing about.

The worst of grief is indescribable, but I have the call on my heart to enter into it to try to describe it. Forgive me.

Adjustment is the last thing on our minds as we tend to surviving what is terrifying. This worst grief imaginable is unwavering when it hits. With the strength of something we know we cannot endure, it threatens our very life. Indeed, we feel as if we could die. And sometimes we wish we would or could.

As we tend toward the free winds of loss, those that move unpredictably and harshly when we are least prepared, we cannot find the shelter we need.

Please know that the reality, no matter how sparse hope is, has something about it that improves us – though we are sickened to think that the pain borne compensates us later when we need that good strength now!

Hear the empathy of God who knows this pain all too well.

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Pain insists upon reckoning. The worst of grief is inexplicable pain. A tirade of force creates a storm of confusion within, and there is just no escape, but to sleep. Waking moments are terror. Enduring the seconds is hellish as time ticks slowly. But have faith; enduring the pain which seems like a waste, really is no waste at all.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.