Sometimes grief is this: standing in the kitchen eating ice cream straight from the container. Overwhelmed by the ache and an intensity that I thought would fade in time, except it hasn’t. It’s shifted and changed and become easier to carry on some days, but not today.
Today, grief is ice cream straight from the quart. Sometimes it’s bathroom floor crying, long drive sobbing, grocery store tears or cemetery heartbreak. With each day it is something new and old all at the same time.
It’s a familiarity and an unknown both together simultaneously. It’s self-destruction, fear and sorrow. It’s gratitude, remembrance and grace. It’s love in its most vulnerable form. The kind that extends and exists beyond life itself.
Sometimes it’s sadness, but most of the time it’s so much more than that.
It’s anger.
It’s jealousy.
It’s confusion.
It’s angst.
It’s devastation.
It’s a constant speech bubble above my head that has a million feelings, regrets and lost wishes.
Today it’s ice cream, tomorrow it might be a peaceful walk. It’s a mixture of self-sabotage and self-care. Constantly wanting to ease the pain and forever trying to erase the pain, without success, or even the hope of success.
It’s a lifetime companionship, messy and complicated. It’s something you can’t lose or hide from. Something constant, unique in its visibility and intensity, with each changing moment.
Sometimes grief is pints of ice cream, sometimes it’s reminiscing, sometimes it’s celebration, sometimes it’s happy and sometimes it’s sad.
Whatever your grief is today, it’s yours and it’s worthy of being acknowledged and respected. Honor it because tomorrow it will likely transform into something new. It will continue to transform and shift and change, just like you since the moment you said your final goodbye.
Today my grief is a diminishing container of ice cream. What is yours?
