The Gift of Grief

The great mother comes to take us all eventually; not out of wickedness but with a love so great, it is incomprehensible. She threshes us, strips us raw, and throws us into the sacred fire so that we may be transformed ( A nod to one of my favorite poems ever written, ‘On Love’ by Khalil Gibran). She gives us the gift of grief.

She comes in the middle of the night - the early dawn, before the sun has even thought of rising. She moves quietly, gently squeezing in through that crack in your window until the whole room is filled of her. The air is thick and heavy. You awake with a shudder, realizing that the rug has been pulled out from under you. You are standing at the edge of eternity. She has cracked you wide open, like the crevasse you find yourself staring into. An enormous wave of grief washes over, tumbling everything in its path. There is no thing to cling to, no steady anchor - just complete and utter surrender.

A release into all that is, lungs filling with water, the lost sense of up or down. She has taken you completely into herself, made you pliable in her thrashing currents. She has come to wash you clean, to take you back. Into her loving arms, you fearfully fall.

After losing all sense of certainty, of ‘things are starting to go my way’, you wash up upon the shore in the light of a new dawn, exhausted and emptied of all expectation. After giving up completely, you land softly into her loving embrace - an unforeseen paradise. A dream upon a winged bird. Clutching her well-worn gift to your heart, you understand her way - her wild ways, her gift of grief. For it is in her thrashing, that she releases. It is in her unraveling that we find our way home. Her sacred fire melts us down and returns us to the heart of all.

To her, we offer silent gratitude from our tired and worn bodies. We whisper our praise, but she has already gone - back into the void from which she came. Leaving us alone with only the fading animation of our memories.