Bereavement

Last edited Fri Jul 1, 2022, 05:03 PM - Edit history (1)

…in response to your post.

Your poem is eloquent, and your question about why is unanswerable. I once saw a bumper sticker that simply said, “Shit Happens.” Not at all eloquent, but it is the only answer I can ever find for circumstances such as these.

I can very much relate to what you are saying about reaching that point in time someone has been gone longer than they were here. I was the older of 2 kids. When he was only 23, my brother Tom died in a scuba diving adventure gone wrong. This was 1978. In 2024, he will have been gone twice as long as he was here. I’m 71. He would have been 68 in May. He is forever 23.

One of the strange things about this kind of grief is that the loss can feel as if it happened 10 seconds ago and forever ago, all at the same time. Tom has been gone so long that it sometimes feels as if I imagined him.

Being bereaved is an invisible wound. No one can tell by looking at us that we are wounded - our skin doesn’t turn blue, we are not using crutches or wearing a cast, we don’t have portable nasal oxygen running, but we are injured and struggling nonetheless.

Thank you for sharing Bekah’s name. I will think of it every time I read one of your posts.