The One Who Cannot Grieve

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There is a benefit to now.
There is a grace in the first year:
people expect grief to overwhelm.
They expect the isolation,
the empty mind,
the wordlessness,
the side effects,
the absence of one’s spirit.
There is grace.

Unfortunate is the one who cannot grieve in the window of grace.

Unfortunate is the one who cannot grieve
in the window of grace.
(Unfortunate is not a big enough word.)
Doors open in the second year,
no matter if one hears the knock,
no matter if one turns the knob.
Doors open.
Expectations rise with the sun.

If one has not done her crying,
her aching,
her bleeding,
if she could not,
for any reason at all,
the grace does not last for always.

If her heart softens later,
people may not understand what is happening inside her.

I liken this to a child
whose brain is not yet ready to read
when phonics is part of the curriculum.
If there’s a sudden literary connection when he’s nine,
instead of when he was six,
the work is remedial.
His friends have moved on to chapter books.
He has just begun to piece the letters together.
They have begun to make sense to him.

But he is behind.

A pity to the one who cannot grieve
when there is time,
when there is grace,
when there is room for the brokenness.

Tricia Lott Williford

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  1. This is SO good Tricia! Once again you are able to express something in words that I have felt, but couldn’t fully express. This is SO true!

  2. Their pace for you doesn’t matter, though. You are doing it exactly right, exactly as you should, at exactly the right pace, because it’s yours. So if “they” are not giving you grace, then they are not for you. Make sure you are gentle and kind with yourself and give yourself the grace that you need. You can do it, dear one.

  3. How true it is that we cannot allow people to walk their journeys and simply accompany them without judgment or presumption. Praying that you will find grace (as will your children) in the journey ahead.

  4. A beautifully expressed but hard truth, Tricia.

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