Diary of a Grieving Woman: A Poem About Grief…

My daddy said grief is like a gaping hole that gets a little smaller with time, but never actually closes.

I say, it feels like pain and tightness in my chest.

Some moments it feels like suffocation.

It is like a dark cloud hovering over my head — condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then becomes heavy enough to fall under gravity. It follows me wherever I go.

I am well acquainted with grief.

Grief has now become a companion of mine.

It’s the one thing that is promised to us all, both human and animals alike.

I no longer run from it.
I cannot outrun it.
It’s all around me.

I eat with it.
I shower with it.
I sleep with it.

I sit with it.

I let the silence fill my eardrums.
Sometimes it bear hugs me and sometimes it just sits across the room —
But it’s always present.

It speaks without a voice.
It’s an energy.
The energy never dies.

I have not learned how to transmute it, if at all possible.

My soul wondered, where is the consolation?
How does one truly finds peace?
Joy seems to like to play hide and seek, while grief finds you without any effort of your own.
I am in no mood to search.

Then, I remembered — there is love.
See, like grief, love is an energy.
It never dies and is always present.
I had to remember the love around me. But most importantly, the love that exist within me.

Love is what I’m made of.
Love grew in my womb.
Love raised me.
Love fed me.
Love nurtured me.

Love never dies.
Nothing can separate me from love:
not death, nor life
nor angels, nor principalities
nor powers
nor things present
nor things to come
not height, nor depth
nor any creature can separate me from its eternal fire.

I remember love.
I sit with it, too.