Embracing Grief

My friend's father - a man I've known for most of my adult life - has passed on. 

He transcended on Sunday, September 10, 2023 at 6:38 am EST.  

As I sit writing this, I am recounting every detail in my mind of his physical presence: his lean shoulders, his square jaw, the glistening white hair and deepset blue eyes.   His laugh, even toward the end of his physical life, was deep and heartfelt, and the sound of it would fill even the most crowded room with music. 

I will miss seeing his face. 

The profound idea that I cannot ever see him again with these eyes of mine seems so unfathomably strange to me.  It seems odd that he won't ever look at me again with his eyes either.   While I was close to him, and had spent time with him over the course of the years, I can't say that I am grieving his loss. My friend, however, is devastated by it. 

Grief is symptom of the changes in our physical experience of the localized consciousness of another human being we love. 

The world doesn't seem as friendly anymore - it seems a hostile place to her now, where those we love disappear eventually, and where we're left bereft in the wake of their departure, with only haunted, hurting memories to cling to.   And she's right about all of that - the world isn't the same as it was when our loved ones stood with us, next to us, held us, consoled us.  It's a different place now, one where we no longer experience them as a physical phenomenon.  One where we are left only recalling images in our head of how their physical experience once was.  

But time itself is only a construct: one that we've created to govern our days and nights here in this sensory-based experience.  Time does not really exist except as a function of our memory or our anticipation of a future event.  There is only right now. 

So now, my friend, if you close your eyes, and deny your eyes their sight altogether, you'll realize that your loved one is still in that space where your eyes do not see - they're still there.  Your eyes no longer see them, it's true.  But the same can be said of the room your'e in: if you close your eyes and no longer see it, does that mean it is gone?   If you can no longer see your beloved, does that mean they are gone?  No more so than the room that you can no longer see but still sit within.   

When you embrance you grief, remember this.   And remember Rumi's words:  "...for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation."