Grief was my teacher for how to grieve

Grief was my teacher for how to grieve.

Absence making itself known in my body like a soft, gentle wave of heaviness. That deep, sucking feeling of being pulled under. The struggle that somehow makes it worse, and the acceptance that makes the emotion brighter but pass faster.

Grief is unpredictable, loving and gentle yet porous, and easily permeated. Grief accepts love into its concoction, but it also attracts anger. Grief wants to overwhelm the emotions it mates with, like an abusive partner that has spotted it has the upper hand.

It wants to spoil the food it touches and deprive the sweetest perfume of its allure. A bleakness sets in, inviting the absence of joy and a feeling of helplessness and listlessness.

And yet, grief is not greedy. It passes when it has finished its ravaging, leaving tiredness — no, exhaustion — behind. But it is also kind and has within it echoes of love. It reminds and examines.

Grief lives only in the past, and only in the recent past at that. The future has no grief. Not yet.