CDPunt(igam) Writes

Have you ever known someone that wanted to be friends with you but you just weren’t sure. You know the one. They’re often by themselves in the break room or off in some corner emoting to themselves. No one wants to be friends with them. Word on the street is that they have cooties, super cooties that don’t respond to the circle circle dot dot shot. Everyone avoids them.

If you prefer listening, you can find this post online here.

Then one day you find yourself face to face with them and you could continue to ignore them, pretend they don’t exist, shove them in a closet, lock the door, ride across the ocean, climb Everest, and toss the key from the highest peak so that it will never be found. The problem with that choice is that they don’t stay in the closet, in fact, once you get up to that peak, certain you’ve finally lost them, you’ll discover them there right beside you.

The other option when you come face to face with them is to just befriend them. You choose not to avoid their demands for friendship and instead lean in to the relationship. You’ll discover that the friendship isn’t the burden you imagined. It isn’t the insurmountable obstacle you made it out to be. Yes, they will be inconvenient, showing up for a moment of your time at the most embarrassing of situations. Yes, your old friends may avoid you as if you now have super cooties (sorry to say but you do, don’t worry they’ll catch super cooties one day if they’re lucky). She’ll sometimes wake you up in the middle of the night and squeeze your heart so hard that silent tears will flow from your eyes and you’ll wonder if you’ll die. She tells you that yes, one day you will but not in this moment. And right before the pain becomes unbearable she lets go releasing all the questions you never get to say out loud, all the things you wonder come flowing out and she sits with you in the midnight ink and holds you reminding you you’re not alone in this dark mystery.

If you can lean into the friendship you’ll eventually see her differently. You’ll see the rage and sadness but she’ll also show you kindness and joy. She’ll bring you smells on the wind that transport you and the most beautiful dreams that almost feel real. Maybe they are real. She’ll show you glimpses of something from the corner of your eye and you’ll see the very thing you thought had been lost forever. But you know that if you try to look too closely it will evaporate like the rain on the pavement on a hot summer day in the South. You’ll learn to see through the glimpses.

You’ll eventually recognize others that have made friends with her and if you’re very observant, you’ll see the ones still trying to keep her in the closet and you’ll be able to sit with them, helping them see the beauty of her friendship.

She’s not the easiest friend to have, she will leave you sticky and infect everything you do, sometimes so much so that it becomes tough to get out of bed and live. But eventually, you overcome the Velcro pull of the deep and you find yourself really living again, doing all the things. You might think that you’ve outgrown her and that your time together is over. It’s not true though, she’s always with you. A quiet companion informing some decisions, occasionally jumping out from behind a corner demanding attention. You’ll wonder how long and the answer is longer than you want to know.

When you first meet, it’s like the two of you are at a sleep away camp and constant companions but eventually you have to figure out how to fit the relationship into your 9 to 5 world. You’d prefer that they just call when you’re at home or in the car but the calls come in the midst of your workaday world because that’s where your heart lives. It lives with you in all your ordinary times and places. So she finds you there and asks, no, demands a moment of your time. But it feels like you’re back on that mountain carrying that key and suddenly your curiosity gets the best of you. You take her call and it really is just a moment. You hear her voice and you let it wash over you. She’s no longer the tsunami you anticipated but instead a gentle low tide wave heading out to sea.

You realize that she isn’t trying to embarrass you or rule your life. She just wants to be with you, hold that burden you’re so worried about, the one that has you pondering if you’ll forget. The burden that has you wondering if you’ll be able to remember that special joke or if worse you’ll live a life as if they didn’t matter.

The longer that you’re friends with her the more you realize she’s not really interested in sadness so much as hope. Hope that love is real and doesn’t die. Hope that there’s just enough time to hold them a little tighter. Hope that this isn’t the end. Hope that one day all this will be different, no more sorrow, no more tears, no more tragedy, no more time. That will be a good day but until then, your loving companion, Grief, will walk with you. Holding you in moments when all seems loss, reminding you this is not the end of the story.