Getting Through Grief

Today I share with you a poem I wrote in 2000, titled Grief's Passing.  When you first read it, you might assume that I had gone through a relationship break-up or suffered the death of someone close to me.  Strangely, the grief that occasioned the poem had to do with my work.  It was a 'Jonah' time for me.  I was happy in my desert home, after having left a job that was no longer tenable for me, and I was enjoying the much needed healing that the desert always offers me. But, God called me to do a task I had no desire to do.  Like Jonah, I wanted to flee from God.  I didn't want God 'meddling' in my healing process! I tried to ignore, avoid, and deny what God was asking me to do.  Yet, again, like Jonah, I was unsuccessful at telling God "No." I finally agreed to go where God was sending me, but I wept and wept when I had to leave the desert.  This poem is the culmination of my grief, and my grief's passing...perhaps, it may help you if you are grieving...

Grief’s Passing

The spiral downward
Into the well
Of blackest grief
Overwhelms.
Until  breath shortens,
Until heart empties,
Until life weakens.
The fall into the
Yawning cavern
Catapults the
Fragile soul
Forcefully, fully.
Hammering,
Battering,
Shattering,
Threatening to rip
The soul's fibers
Without mercy;
Shred by shred,
By suffering shred.
And then,
In half-whispered tones
The propelling motion
Is stilled.
Cells compressed, relax.
Air seeps silently
Into the fractured
Pockets that
Grief left behind.
A deeper breath begins.
The heart fills.
Life is glimpsed again
With gossamer threads
Of gratitude.

                © 2000 Renee Miller