It seems like grief, I suppose like memories, never gets buried deeply. It seems like it also troops in together; all the loss you've ever felt links arms and rushes at you en masse.
Is this true? Is that always the way? Will every loss from now on just compound on each other, until each death is catastrophic, or until I dissociate from myself and live apart from emotion and attachment?
Stephen's great grandmother died last week. She was an amazing, 90-year-old woman. She was completely in love with Jesus, and He used her to love people. She is dancing in heaven right now. I want to be like her.
That being said, I didn't know Granny B well. I spent time with her on five or maybe six different occasions. But I have known loss, mourning, and grief, and I cried a lot at her memorial service. It seems, oh, like the loss of my grandmothers became fresh and real again, even though I lost one when I was only four years old. I have grieved her death many, many times through the years, even though I know I will see her again. See her and know her. We will make memories we won't even have to remember. I grieve not remembering her as much as not seeing her now.
Anyway, I know this is emotional, and maybe even boring to some, but it just struck me as so odd. Almost embarrassing, that I would cry so much for a woman I barely knew, even though she is fully worth missing while we cannot be with her. But why is grief not satisfied? Is there not a number of tears that allows it to relinquish its hold?
I'm not in mourning. I do not think of the people to whom I've said goodbye every day. But even if each revolution of the cycle of grief gets larger and larger, while the intensity is usually less and less, I wish I could be free of the pain of unexpected tears.
