tears

It
hurts
so
badly
to
grieve
the loss of David...

No, "hurts" is too soft a word.
It feels like what I imagine a soldier would look like after being hit by a round
of mortar,
leaving a gaping whole in his abdomen...

like walking
around
with a                          whole                         piece of you                                      missing.

I push away the grief, shove it away because it wears me out, wears me down, drains me.
Yet, like a geyser, it comes suddenly spewing with all the ferocity and power from having been pent up. I cannot fight it. Like the ocean, I must not fight the waves that pound me, but roll with them.

And
the
tears
roll
too..

I like what Nancy Guthrie, a woman who buried two of her children at the age of six months due to Zellweger Syndrome said in her book, Holding Onto Hope:

"The day after we buried Hope, my husband said to me, '...Our faith gave us an incredible amount of strength and encouragement while we had Hope, and we are comforted by the knowledge that she is in heaven. Our faith keeps us from being swallowed by despair. But I don't think it makes our less hurt any less.'" She goes on to say, "...I lost someone I loved dearly, and I'm sad. Ours is not a culture that is comfortable with sadness. Sadness is awkward. It is unsettling. It ebbs and flows and takes its own shape. It beckons to be shared. It comes out in tears, and we don't quite know what to do with those. So many people are afraid to bring up my loss. They don't want to upset me. But my tears are the only way I have to release the deep sorrow I feel."

So don't be afraid to bring up David for fear of making me cry. Thoughts of him are always just under the surface anyway. In fact, it hurts more to ignore that he ever existed. My tears show, as Nancy Guthrie describes, "that you've touched me in a place that is meaningful to me--and I will never forget your willingness to share my grief."