Why are all our metaphors for grief somewhat akin to the digestive process? Hamlet’s dissertation on the king’s progress through the guts of a beggar popped in my mind when I started thinking about this. I rather think at the other side of grief is something other than a steaming pile of poop.
This isn’t a linear process. It is a dialectic between the sorrow of loss and the joy of remembrance. It is a cetacean cycle of plumbing the depths of grief followed by surfacing into the clear light and air of knowing, of remembering.
As I cycle through, I dive shallower, and surface more joyfully for I would rather live in the light of remembrance than drown in the depths of my grief. Not that I will ever be free of the depths, I just will not live there.
And I do not want to be free of those depths. They are a part of remembrance. This dialectic will reshape me. Remold me into someone slightly different. The phrase ‘the ego grieves, the soul transcends’ is echoing in my mind. A small piece of enlightenment I will carry in my heart from this ordeal.