Grieving is a Project

It is difficult to express the price we pay to experiment with fate. In regard to our own lives many of us expose self to dangers that we would never allow our own siblings or children to experience. All told, when the frosty wintry ice and slush melts away, and the remembrance of all those winters is embedded in the rationale of our minds; the questions perch upon our lips like flakes of snow. Did we come this far despite our selfish ways, and self-destructive notions?

And we answer self, "I'm still here."

Then we may turn to greater-than-we-are amplifications, bigger-than-life generalizations, although it still rings out in the final wash: "Truth is beyond a doubt stranger than fiction."

I am in a state of grieving. At first I did not remember that somewhere I had heard humans naturally succumb to grieving, until I was rocked by my friend's passing away. At first denying it all, I became then angry, today I am more bargaining than yesterday. Letting slip some duties and getting behind, I asked Jesus to handle some of the toil on my agenda, while promising that I will hold down the other parts as best I can. And with no clue how that propels me forward I know; isn't it obvious that my friend's death is only indicator to the real unspeakable dangers, and the answers are as fleeting as respiration, and as distant as Neptune?

I may be as typical a human as any, after all, with all the frailty, and dangers lurking, just outside my bubble of self-regard that "everything is going to be okay." However this day my heart beats in unusual rhythms, hurriedly when I lay to rest, slowly when I try to work.

Imposing as it is, grieving is a project that must be factored, measured and managed just like all risk management. How else to carry on, without doubt, to our engagements and enterprises? Occurrence of grieving is a real risk, implicit and natural as stones and mortar, that all must chance for the privilege of life. PD