Fall colors, a cacophony of visual splendor, skirt the front range in breathtaking beauty. Seasons shift as nature discards her leafy summer bounty in favor of simpler adornments. I find myself wanting to nuzzle deep into her arms, beside a surplus of collected grain (gluten-free of course) and slumber through the pending chill and icy days ahead. Until then, I spend my days astonished in the presence of so much beauty. Every breath is gratitude if we but lift our eyes to meet the day.
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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