It feels so inappropriate that the world just keeps turning. Surely an hour must have more time in it than this. Ridiculous, right? This is where grief feels so self-indulgent. Because of course it must. I have a loving husband, and children, two beautiful children, alive with need, and joy, and exuberance just soaking up every moment of this autumn. One has a birthday in a little over a week. He’s rollerblading in the dining room right now. Vanity, vanity, everything is meaningless. The other is just sunshine wherever she goes, singing to me, tucking me in with her wubbies all day. Both of them, the light and loves of my life. Such sharp contrasts, everywhere.
I have school work due, because this is the life I inhabit; it is a life with edges and borders and things in it. I do not live in an insulated hyperbaric chamber. It feels so rude, so insensitive that grief cannot exist in a vacuum. But of course it can’t, or it would never end. It would just be sitting there, motionless and still, forever mourning. No, the garish world must intrude, with all its inappropriate frivolity like getting dressed and eating and laughing and due dates and deadlines and love and joy and children and new life and renewal.
Dawn feels inconsiderate. I told you, grief feels so selfish. But it is mercy. Dawn is mercy, and the 5 month old babbling on the lap of my seat mate on the flight to Ft. Lauderdale was mercy. Just joy embodied and blissfully unaware. God does that on purpose, you know. And my children, they are mercy, and the food I don’t want to eat and the water I must drink, it is mercy, and the flowers and ferns are all mercy, and the insistence of color in this world instead of just black, black, black, it is mercy. It is all mercy. He does this on purpose, you know.