Grief is the envenomation of my heart by death

It is poison coursing thru my bloodstream that works its way out of me thru moans, anguish, tears and sorrow.

Death is an affront to all my sensibilities. I will never ever be comfortable with any aspect of it. I have no fear of it because I have no experience directly with it only in the chaos it causes in my life. I am choking in its coils after its fangs have delivered their poison.

Grief is purgatory. Where the living experience a suspension between what they knew, what they hoped for, what they built, the love they made, and the slow, miserable, inexorable dawning that all those things have been hijacked and co-opted by death.

Grief is the concussion from a collision with death. Just like a violent hit during a football game I have gotten up off the ground and tried to shake it off. Outwardly I “look” fine. I have no physical manifestation of injury. But I am broken. My heart has been shattered.

Agony echoes and reverberates and ripples into my future. I can no more “snap out of it” or “get on with it”  than I can command a broken femur or dislocated shoulder to just get better.

My heart was never made to bear grief. This is why it hurts so much. It’s why so little can bring any relief to the suffering caused by the loss of Lindsey. My heart was made to love, and liberated by, being loved. Hearts were never made for the torments of grief.

The venom of Grief has to work its way out much as if I had literally been bitten by a rattlesnake.
It cripples my heart. It ruins my mind. It gnaws at my soul.

I cannot set my intentions directly against it for I will fail. I cannot set a time limit for it’s passing or command it or bend it to my will.

BUT

My Life. My breath. My heartbeat. My mere existence is an affront to Grief.

So by simply choosing to live, by breathing, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat, things not even under my control or volition, I am making headway. Even reluctantly.

I am prevailing. My life is revenge against death and against grief.

The tears I shed are pain leaving my body. I will not stop them. They are the antidote for envenomation.

Tears are not weakness. They are gentle rain showers on the grave of my wife.

Flowers will break thru the earth because of them.