Wednesday, May 27, 2015

How to handle sorrow

I'm struggling today. Actually, for a few days. For the second time since I moved here I'm trying to deal with death from 7, 650 kilometers away.

Initially there's the dilemma of how to convey my sympathy to someone so very far away. My grief doesn't have words that haven't been rendered meaningless by eons of use and repetition. There are no new words to say that my heart is crying with yours, and I don't know when it will stop.

The fact that I can only communicate in the written word makes it even more difficult. I hope that they hear my voice as they read words that seem stripped of their emotion by the fact that they're framed by something as mundane as an email platform.

I'm also reminded that life begins and ends without warning and without mercy, and that I will have to do this many times. Sometimes, as with this moment, death will only brush the edges of my existence, but one day it will strike at the center of my world. While I can't  possibly prepare for it I must at least acknowledge that those 7,650 kilometers will both magnify and dull my responses.

And so now I'll sit down and have a good cry for a life ended too soon, a family surely broken and lost at least for now, and a community left wondering what if.

2 comments:

  1. My heart and soul are with you at this difficult time....may your days ahead be more at peace.
    Sincerely,
    Aletha

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  2. Hello Michele, I don't know what's on and I'm sorry it happened. If you want to go over written words, mayve a Skype call or a phone call could help? Then, Death is part of life ; it is just too too bad when it comes too early or for reasons we can't understand or accept. Hugs Lia

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