Member-only story
Murph’s Musings
The Sacred Darkness of Grief
Dismantling the old to make way for the new
I’ve long thought that if I understood something deeply enough, I could free myself from it.
I believed that if I examined my mother’s life ~ pulled it apart, analyzed every moment, turned each memory over in my hands ~ I could soften the impact of her loss. That if I mapped out our history with enough clarity, I could grieve her ahead of time, process the pain before it ever had the chance to take root.
But grief is not something you outthink. It is not a puzzle to be solved or an equation to balance. It does not bow to logic, nor does it respect preparation. It is not linear, nor is it polite.
It lingers at the edges, in the Bardo, quiet and patient, waiting for the moment when your defenses are down, when you think you have already moved through it ~ and then, without warning, it rises.
For a while, I believed I had bypassed the weight of it. I had done the work. I had made peace. I had let go.
And then, one day, my mother’s voice returned.
The more I tried to push it away, the louder it became. She was pressing against something, stirring something deep inside, refusing to let me move forward without acknowledging…
