One of my favorite things to do, for as long as I can remember, is to find somewhere far away from people and very close to wild and lay down on the bare earth, beneath warm sun and wide sky and sleep. It is so delicious and decadent. As I lay there, head cushioned on weeds and grasses, body caressed by breeze and insect, I relax and my entire body breathes a deep sigh of ease and release. It is as close to HOME as any thing I know of.
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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