Grief

The world is engulfed in grief. Public grief is powerful, and different from private, personal grief. I thought I was coping well, in a Buddha sort of way, with the Pope's death, the death of Stephen Plummer, Episcopal Bishop of the Navajo Nation and a sometime friend, and the serious illness of a couple of friends.

Then this morning came a phone call telling of the death in a car crash of Kayla, the nine year old daughter of our next door neighbor in Vermont.

And the grief flowed over me like a torrential storm.

The only way to cope with grief is to grieve. No ducking it. We all hate it. It is triggered by the stark evidence of our being unwitting players in this drama we love to pretend we are authoring. Grief is hard, physical work, draining energy, demanding our full attention.

I had let myself believe Kayla would always be there, playing with our terrier, slamming our mud room door on her way to find him, bringing a snake to tease Lacey. One day I would die, but long before Kayla moved from next door.

Grief is reality demanding more than we can provide.