Emily Dickinson wrote
“Grief is a Mouse –
Grief is a Thief – quick startled –
Grief is a Juggler – boldest at the Play –
Best Grief is Tongueless – before He’ll tell -“
I won’t feign to know what all this means but I do know grief isn’t just sadness or loneliness like we might think.
Grief is absences, gaps, blank spaces that a person once in inhabited.
It is a lonely, haunting echo of silence.
It’s a shadow that follows you; a scent that rides the wind and sparks a memory.
Grief is remembering and forgetting and hating yourself for forgetting and hating it when you remember.
Grief is a holiday or a once-special day that’s meaningless now because they are not there to share it with.
It’s lack of interest in all the things that once brought you joy, especially those things that you did together.
Grief is so much more than sadness, pain, depression; grief is happiness because grief, of course, is love.
To grieve is to love.
To grieve is to have lost love.
To grieve is to hold on to love.
To grieve is to have love change shape.
S. R. Crawford 