Day 343 - Grieving While Old

We live in a world of short pep-talks/videos/solutions/advice for everything... and reagdless of what the videos are about, the underline message usually is: “Just pull yourself together, you can do anything!” Well, if someone asked me to write a book on grieving, the first paragraph would likely be something of that sort: There is no cure for a broken grieving heart. There is no pulling together. Grieving is just there with you all the time! Sometimes you feel it less, sometimes more. Sometimes it feels unbearable. Sometimes it feels as a natural part of life. The only comfort is knowing that a grieving heart is a heart that has experienced deep love.

When I was a kid, I thought that adults are pretty good at this grieving thing. When my mom’s dad passed, she seemed ok to me. Now I know, she was not. She was just coping and moving on for us and in front of us. I used to think that older people are more rational about things and when they lose someone, they just move on. I am a wife, a mother, a grown woman and miss my dad every day and when I cry for him, I cry as though I am 5 years old. I am all grown up for everything else in life, but I feel I can never be grown enough or wise enough to overcome grieving. As it turns out, there is no age for grieving. The morning of Day 1 after you lose a person you love, we all feel the same no matter how old we are - lost. And angry, and sad, and confused, and in disbelive. And lost.  

* * *

Two years ago in Rome, I had the chance for the first time to visit Saint Peter's Basilica in Vatican City and experience Michelangelo’s La Pieta. It was the first time in my life when simply standing in front and looking at a sculpture brought so much emotion in me. I stood there with my tears falling, feeling all over again the pain of the last moments I had with my dad and his physical body. We suffer because we love. And Michelangelo was a genius.