I feel her watching this with me now. I feel her, I feel her. Laughing. Loving.
For more, go to:
Mary Kreilkamp Cowan: “Is that all? That’s easy!” and other posts in The Grieving Time. (Scroll to the bottom, for “Mary’s Dying Process.”)
You might wonder why I “keep going on and on” about Sister Mary. Well, simply, I can hardly help myself! And why should I throttle what keeps surging up from inside? As her beautiful husband John mentioned yesterday on the phone, it’s absolutely crazy that the standard time allowed for “grief” in the workplace now is three days. Three days? Huh?
Grief is an unknown country, with hills and hollows, rivers and lakes, dark nights and forests, wide plains of nothingness amidst sudden convulsions triggered by memory, and brilliant sparkling sunrises, all its own. To try to predict what will happen when and for how long is — as I and anyone who allows him or herself to actually experience the phenomenal primal power of the grieving process — downright foolish. Our fear of death is in part our fear of our own wildly emotional grieving process — re: both our own eventual death, and that of others. Let’s let all that go!
Otherwise, grief gets locked inside, where, left unchecked, untended, and boiling underground, its immense creative power turns destructive, spewing out untold damage, to our bodies and minds and souls, to others; to the planet itself; over years, decades, centuries, eons.
As we witness now.
