Memory of Joy in Present Grief 🥀.

Time heals wounds….but it also creates some more.

Photo by Jack Anstey on Unsplash

Grief you’d think to be short, succinct. it’s quite the opposite; it’s fickle and it lingers.

Certain days, its shades of good memories painting the dark empty canvas grief leaves behind. Other days, it’s the spirit crushing reality of unexpressed emotions, lost moments ,experiences you can never share and a plethora of imaginary scenarios that leave you with the bitter taste of “should have, would have, could have” that grief leaves behind.

With age and experiences of life, I’m left with so many unresolved emotions, unanswered questions I’d have loved to ask my dad, a different perspective i would have appreciated, reassurances that would have put my mind and racing anxiety at ease.

Grief is perhaps the last and final translation of love. It’s the last act of loving someone. And you realize that it will never end. You get to do this to translate this last act of love for the rest of your life — Ocean Vuong

“You don’t know what we have till it’s gone”

So many moments i realize i took for granted just thinking hey! he’s my dad, i see him almost every other day. In the moment, my actions and behavior towards our relationship was perceived inconsequential but like i said; age, maturity and hard life experiences will ground you in the reality of value lost and how much time and experience was taken for granted just being complacent and lost in the comfort of availability, not really having an understanding of mortality and loss because it hadn’t hit this close to home in the past.

Time creates some more wounds; Deep unresolved sores of the heart and mind despite your efforts to cope, distract or engage yourself. It comes just like waves crashing on shore. Emotional wounds are a lot more complex unlike scraping your knee and using a band aid with certainty that time would do the needful, this takes time…… a lot of it apparently and healing as i have discovered is not a linear process.

“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.” ― David Richo

Memories of Joy

Some days, fond memories trigger a “happy cry” other days it’s the gut wrenching feeling of absence and loss that open the floodgates of painful tears. You have wishful moments and made up scenarios in your mind of how things should have played out. For me, it’s more intense on days like today which is my dad’s remembrance.

I want to lean towards remembering the good aspects and the legacy he left behind but today feels like a lucid dream; I’m experiencing the day he died and all the motions attached to it all over again and its so vivid and dark; i get cottonmouth and feel plagued with repressed emotions and memories as old as 7 years ago. The very last time i saw him, his inability to recognize who i was or even muster the strength to speak and say goodbye. Memories of walking into his hospital room hours later and seeing him covered in sheets, a myriad of shit i want to forget so bad but they seem so poignant this time of the year and it makes me feel like i haven’t entirely moved on. Yet through this hopelessness and despair we’re supposed to believe enough time passed will take it all away.

Grief remains and life grows around it. Life really goes on almost immediately. You watch the world move on while you feel stuck with accepting a painful reality and finding ways to also “move on” but…..we never really move on from experiences like this.

Like an infected wound, it gets worse if not tended to in healthy prescribed ways like therapy, medication, vulnerability through conversations and various outlets like writing which has been mine and even through spirituality (turning to God and the higher powers) in many cases. You need something greater than yourself to go through these motions, to avoid being consumed by grief and experience some level of happiness, stability and sanity.

☀️

Despite the gloominess of it all, i believe there has to be space for some joy. The joy of being able to have experienced life being his son; just watching, observing and soaking in all the game he unknowingly gave in retrospect. Beneath the calm, gentle, reserved, kind and thoughtful person he was not just to his family but the world. This beautiful yet rotten world we exist in. So much I’m still learning from and about him in death which leaves me in awe sometimes.

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you’ll learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.” — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler

The cliche is time heals wounds; it’s not entirely untrue because enough time births healing in the form of reflection, introspection and insight especially about the experience of death, grieving and what matters in life ultimately. It’s not completely a bitter situation , I’ve been able to understand myself better , become a lot more intentional, express my emotions better to the people who really matter to me, learnt to accept how fleeting this human experience of life is, finding value in genuine friendships and beautiful moments that can’t be replicated when they come around all with a mindful approach.

“And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.” — Maya Angelou

I remember you today still with a bittersweet taste in my mouth but more of the sweet this year. Time keeps zooming, it hurts somedays, its fond on others but ultimately; you are dearly missed and “The song is ended but the melody lingers on.”- Irving Berlin. 🖤♾️

🎶☝🏾

This song somedays feel like warm honey; it soothes, gives me so much peace, hope, joy and comfort.. other days it breaks me down completely. Tears of sadness, happiness and emotions difficult to describe being let out all at once, Its so soulful and beautiful, powerful, spirit fueled and meaningful on different levels, feels sort of like a cleansing sometimes and it helps me go through the motions times like this; when it feels a little too heavy. Its sacred and depending on how deeply you connect to and experience music, you just might feel it too.

🪶 29/01