Owen pulled this little bout of self-expression out of his closet this week. When he came out swaggering with a hint of Mick Jagger mixed with Michael Jackson and asked me, "So Mom, how do I look?", oozing pride out of every pore. I had to smile and say, "Man, you look awesome!". And he did. Not just because he threw a tie over a white t-shirt and paired it with jeans, work boots and a blazer...but he added a fedora and some mirrored specs. Now that takes some fashion nerve! Gotta love that in a nine year old, when most of his peers are concerned with mastering the art of blending, Owen is content to express himself.
Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the
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