What do I do with this crippling grief?

A polarising question to loss: “What do I do with this crippling grief?”

There is a simple answer to a question that is an eternal conundrum.  The pain of grief has been felt by people since people have existed.

The answer is there is no answer.  Yes, I know that this seems absolutely confounding.  But there is a purpose in being confounded.  Being confounded is the right response to something confounding.  

Contemplating this leads us to a place contemplation.  It leads to silence.  From silence comes respect for all things that do not have answers, for there are many of those in life.

To loss, there is no answer.  

And yet what is to come of crippling grief?

Silence.  Stillness.  Surrender.

~

In the discombobulating reality of loss, grief invades as an ever-present foe, stealing all semblance of peace, hope, and joy.  It causes us to distrust both present and future.  It annihilates all confidence that happiness is possible again.  It’s like we’ve travelled through a portal to hell and cannot get back to the life we once knew as comparatively safe and wonderful.  We envy what we once had.  It’s like a parallel universe where we see others untouched by loss get on with ‘their happy lives’.  In loss, a series of blows is meted out in a season of unparalleled injustice.  

There is no making sense of it.  There are no words.  Anything ventured is a waste of space and energy.  And yet, somehow the answer is closer than ever before.  In a topic that makes no sense, sense is finally made when we agree that searching is senseless.  

So what do we do with this crippling grief?  There is no answer.  Knowing there is no answer is itself an answer, and a way forward.  And when we can’t move forward it is okay to stay as we are.

If we are crippled with grief it is comfort we need, not glib answers.