Grief...

Grief is a tricky thing. You can never be sure when it will sneak up on you. It could be a song playing on the radio, a subtle whiff of a cologne that triggers a sense of familiarity, a color that sends your mind on a spiraling trip filled with despair.

Today it was Kobe Bryant’s death. I didn’t know the man personally, never even been a fan of basketball but everyone knows Kobe. I turned on the television to the news today morning and it was the first piece that jumped out. I saw the images of the smoldering helicopter, stark against a dark grey mountain. Immediately my heart squeezed and I felt the tears bubbling up from inside me. But it was not about Kobe even though I could tell he was much beloved. It transported me back to that moment when the doctor stood before my mother and I and told us my father was gone. I recalled the numbness, the complete shutting down of my body, the utter lack of feeling at first. I remember placing my headphones in my ears and listening to Casting Crowns “Praise you in this storm” over and over. It was dark and rainy then just as it was when Kobe’s helicopter went down.

The thing with grief is all the questions you are left with... what were the last words I said to my father before he died? Did he know how much I loved him? Was he afraid when he took his last breath? Did he feel pain? Is it really going to be alright? Why does everybody keep saying it’s God’s plan? What am I supposed to do with all these I’m sorries? What now?

I imagined Vanessa with these questions, or a version of them... and I thought of my father... his soft hands and how he used to lay on the sofa reading a newspaper, a cigarette always on his hand... I thought of how I used to discuss the weather with him and how I fought with him…I thought of hearing his voice on the phone and laughing when he kept his bowl of fruit salad in the fridge… and I thought about how I would never see these things again.

The thing with grief is it never really goes away… it hides after a while like a scab that has formed over a wound... then its peeled away when another reminder of death is thrust in your face… grief remains with you, hidden like the darkness when the sun comes up...it is a constant reminder to love, to hold, to laugh, to forgive.. It is also a reminder that you will never get the answers you seek because as cliché as it sounds, life really is to be lived.