On Journeying Grief
“To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is udending.”- Bell Hooks
There are two things for certain when one is born into this world: you will experience life and you will experience death. One of the two is part of the other, but we grow up learning that they are two separate entities and the latter is something to fear. So we spend our lives running away from death because it’s supposed to be this terrible thing. We fear it for ourselves just as much as we fear the death of those we love. And we often focus on the death of our human existence, but death comes in the form of relationships and experiences, too. No matter what form of death arrives at your door, it arrives with a companion that we have come to know as grief. And this grief also arrives when we lose other things like friendships, relationships, jobs, belongings and experiences.
Grief is defined as deep emotional and mental distress due to loss or regret (Dictionary). It’s said that grief, as the majority of us know it, comes in seven stages: shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression, upward turn, working through, and acceptance and hope. If you ask me what grief is, it is the buildup of love and emotion for a target that no longer exists in the realm and/or space that it once did. Grief does not always have to be attached to regret, and transitions are not always a loss.
At 16, one month after my sweet 16 and a day before Christmas, my father suffered a massive stroke, unexpectedly. Three days and three nights later, he transitioned into his highest self that is now limitless. If you asked me how I felt then, I would have told you I hated God. I thought I lost my best friend. I thought I was fatherless. I thought I was alone. I thought I was robbed of everything and every experience a girl was supposed to have experienced with her father from youth into adulthood. What about when I get married? He’s supposed to be there to walk me down the aisle. What about when I have children? He’s supposed to be there to support me in raising them and teach them all the wisdom he has. To me all of that was lost and I grieved all of it. However, I had no regret because for sure I loved my Daddy’o’ with everything I had in me-- to the point my mother felt that I would choose him over her any day (I’d choose them both).
Fast forward to two summers ago, I was in a bodega in Brooklyn with an old friend, and when we asked Papi how his day was going, he replied it wasn’t going well. When we asked why he said he was sad, grieving the loss of his grandmother who had preceded him in transitioning a few years prior. I understood the place he was in because I had been there before, but I wasn’t there anymore. When we walked outside, I turned to my old friend and told her I felt bad for him because that whole he was in is a dark place to be, and the light only comes in when you change your perspective on who people are to us and what death really is.
People don’t belong to us. They're a gift, an experience, a life guide. We are all here in the physical realm but for a short period of time. And when death comes knocking, we become limitless-- should you have lived a life that set you up to be free in transitioning. Death isn’t final-- it’s a step forward in your ascension to the highest of heights.
For Papi, his grandmother belonged to him and was supposed to be there for a longer period of time-- in the physical. For me, my father was an experience, and he’s still here. His love is still present. My love is still transcending, reaching him wherever he is. That walk down the aisle? He’ll be there in the movement of the trees when the wind blows. He’ll be there in the sky shining light into and over me. He’ll be there in the wind that surrounds me, holding me together in one piece. He’ll be there in the bouquet of sunflowers that will lay beside my mother on the front row. As for my children and instilling wisdom in me? He’s instilled in me the wisdom to give to them. He’s told me the stories that are to be shared with them. He’s shared his dreams for his legacy to continue through them. He taught me love that they will come to know. The experience looks different, but the transitioning of dimensions does not mean all is lost.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am human, and these eyes shed tears for what I once knew, but my soul finds gratitude in knowing he’s closer than he’s ever been and bigger than his physical body would have allowed him to be. So the tears are cleansing-- they’re holy water.
So Beloved, feel all that you feel when earthly transitions happen in your life, but do know something or someone is ascending in the process, and that is beautiful. Cry if you must, for you are water, but don’t drown in your tears. Be cleansed by them. This is all temporary-- we have eternity to reach. We have wings to spread wide-- on earth and above. There’s no such thing as an ending when you see all that life really is. It’s all apart of life-- even death.
I love you.