Delight Chilegide Olumati

When grief walks into us, do we welcome it with a trained heart and a brave mind or do we stand and walk ourselves into confusion? Does it trigger happy memories or does it just trigger in us the hard fact that our present and possibly future doesn’t feel full anymore? Is grief an indicator of a vacuum? Is loss painful? Is death bad? Is life everything? Or are these just our customs of how everything should feel?

What do we call consequences when it’s now about death? Is death a general fact that we all have to face head-on or is death a myth? What is life? If death is part of life, what earth can we call where they go after this one? What is real and what is not?

What do we address as dead? Is it everything we’ve given life to or only the life we didn’t breathe into? Can an idea be dead? Can friendships die? Can our past be buried? Can our tongue carry what we’ve lost emotions for? Can thoughts stay down?

I know the knowledge of nothing is scary and sweet. I know the ignorance of answers can sometimes be bliss. I know life isn’t even the heaven we wished for. I also know that you do not bury what is still alive.
When grief walks into us, what do we wish we knew?

Do we wish we knew it was coming before it came? Do we think we’d have welcomed it differently? Do we wish we knew the right seat to offer it? Do we think the space it chose to occupy was the right fit? Do we think our lives would have turned out better? Do we think we deserved some control over it? Do we wish it had a face?

Grief has taught some of us to appreciate the presence of joy and that’s a lesson we’ve held onto. Grief wasn’t the gentle reminder we had hoped for. Grief isn’t the butterfly we saw the last time it visited. Grief has lost its ability to walk in slowly. These days it just aggressively comes in. Do we wish it never existed? Do we appreciate its existence?

May the mind that ponders find what makes it find rest. And may the heart that always wonders feel at ease because these questions are what makes us who we are…humans.