Grief is one of the harshest masters in the human
experience. It brings the mighty low,
the organized chaos, the challenger questioned, the loved despair, the hopeful
discouraged, the defender defenseless, the thoughtful silence, the overwhelming
overwhelmed, and the visionary sightlessness.
Every association with the loss is reviewed, catalogued, questioned, responsibility
assigned and regularly judged at time quite harshly. Grief, by many, is considered something we
must go through. Personally, I feel she
is a witch, a dispassionate warrior, testing who will join her army of the
unfeeling, the disengaged, and the unemotional.
She regularly is seen following Death.
She visits each person, sometimes multiple times, investigating,
recruiting, rewarding, in hopes of growing her armies.
Death visits when someone must be escorted from this World. Those spared must live with the
aftermath. Some will deny the visit,
others will ignore it. Still others face
the consequences of connectedness and emotions, willingly or unwillingly. Others will justify their role in Death’s
visit and others will condemn themselves.
Death does not judge. It simply
is the last power that holds sway over our human condition. It does not direct us to heaven or hell. It merely brings peace to the suffering,
uncaring for those it has not been called to collect, but delivers the gift of
grief in the visits final moments. No
one ever questions its gender, likely because it never has discriminated in its
inclusion.
Grief, on the other hand, is not as dispassionate as Death. Grief and Reflection walk hand in hand staggering
those loved with memories which ceaselessly repeat, disabling drive, raising
concerns, causing frustration. Few
escape willingly this morass of review for these are the last of the connections. Overwhelming quiet keeps rapt attention while
sleep inescapably flees. Regrets and
understanding collide while mechanisms for coping are considered, abandoned or
tried, with little success. Questions
that never were asked will remain unanswered.
Priority lies scattered as leaves in the wind. Distraction is no match for despondence. Peace is fleeting while Escape is
unattainable. Rage is only an episode
away. Stiffness in inertia slows every
response scaring others, concerning others, perplexing others.
Grief’s complexity magnifies her power in matrixes of
malice. No two events the same, no responses
similar, grief throws the most experienced a new round of emotions to manage. The matrix of reaction creates results
differing in each victim each time, a chess board of emotions unpredictable in
each event. Intensity of the love
experienced is multiplied by the interpersonal health of the relationship. Add the sum of the processes and dependence
of the victims while exponentially include the length of the tragedy but divide
the moments of resolution. Then add the years
of interconnectedness and memories and multiply the previous sums of loss. The recipe results mathematically conspiring to
disable, disown, distract, destroy and deter the one remaining from the future. No one can prepare for her challenges, her
tests, or the results. They simply
experience it.
Others may rally to defend against Grief’s assaults out of
concern to no avail. The war Grief stirs
is inside. The eyes of the wounded turn
inward to watch as heaven and earth war for their host’s sanity. A new normal will emerge though what it looks
like who can say. Memories will
regularly emerge to challenge, coerce, cajole. They will not have the power
they have today. The rush of the world
will force movement, though Time holds sway today. The battle for focus continues. The strategies of coping create choices daily,
postponing responsibility, enabling habits of management, disengaging the
connections of life.
New Normal is the work of Grief.
Grief bears results regularly testing each person. Many have met regret, remorse, and bitterness. Others have become overwhelmed with Grief’s
abilities to exacerbate emotions, charring connections between others,
straining the receptors in one’s mind to manage the feedback from longing,
abandonment, or loneliness. In attempts
to manage grief, the new normal strategies can have someone turn to outward
management over inward mechanisms with short term or longer term impacts. Ultimately, Grief has no clear result. No time limit. No dependence on the type of individual. Grief individually assigns it best and worst
cases to each individual, on a personal level.
And, with it, the emotions the individual least likely may expect.
Grief, in her process to test each person, has few
questions. She is merely recruiting and
encouraging people to join her. She
visits each person to invite them to join her.
She requires that you go through her process, but at every chance
suggests strategies that will keep them with her. The process is tortuous; the question comes
frequently to join her Army of Avoidance.
She suggests that the process will not bring healing, hope, and
reconnection. She hopes the victims of
Life will cling to her, surviving only on memories of the past. Her goal is to prune Life’s impact, the
interconnection, and the energy from the human experience in weeks and years to
come.
Grief culls the barely living from those who want to return to
Life. Her results for recruitment are
basic in this matrix of mourning. It
determines whether we return from Grief’s visit with a new appreciation of Life
and an appreciation for the depth of the human experience and the impact of the
person we loved. The gift from Grief for
making this decision is invigorated by a New Normal. She is as wise as she is cruel. This gift is one she provides because she
knows that with it, she may return again to test, to torture, to seek our wish
to escape the next loss, to avoid being overwhelmed by circumstances, emotions,
and Death’s visits. She may yet enroll us
in her Zombie army, a growing host willing to avoid emotion and community. Overwhelmed by Grief’s invitation proves too
wonderful to resist. Her only
requirement is giving her their future.
No comments:
Post a Comment