on grief

anyone who thinks that grief gets easier with time is a liar, a fool, or an innocent. a little bit of each, i suppose.

we bereaved, we go on living. grief lives below the surface of our skin, circulating in our heart's blood, coiled in our viscera, where we draw breath, guileless, wordless, bereft, desolate.

grief ebbs and it flows.

grief is inconsolable.

yes, with time's passage, it diminishes, worndown by the exigencies of surviving/living. the infinite healing wisdom of the body only allows us to remember only as much pain as we can bear and no more; for the remembering of the vast depths of intensity would surely destroy us in the process. those who do ptsd flashback to cyclically re-live the trauma are forevermore broken by its intensity, ambling about existence crippled by chasmic despair. they are damaged souls mired in the past. and society, the living, abandon them to their suffering in the mental institutions and streets.

for we who survive with grief intact, what never fades, what shadows all life experiences is that very loss. the loss haunts us. the palpable lack of our loved one. all of life's meaningful passages and blessings incomplete without her/his tangible presence. we bereaved are presented with the prospect of our lives gaping before us and forevermore, our loved one will not share it with us. all of life's joy is that much sharper for it, tinged with a keening, lifelong heartache.

we grieve for a vanished future.

last year, we sat all three of us--melinh, tuyen and me--sharing a mortuary pew, sisters in sorrow, connected by our grief, disconsolate, fatherless daughters, mourning for a bittersweet morrow without them. time will not ease our loss; it will only bring more granular days without them.

and little annabelle grace. she would be 20 days old today. never to draw her first startled breath. never to suckle at her mother's breast. never to coo in delight. grow chubby, and make up her own gurgling language. never to have her woes comforted. never to learn mischief from and confide in aunty lani. never to bask in love's growth. no verbose ointments of sentiment and good intentions can salve this.

we mourn for ourselves.

it doesnt get easier. it never gets better. we just go on.