stumbling blocks

                                                                                                                  

For many people who are working hard to heal from deep grief, there are moments in that journey that seem simply too painful, too tangled, too confusing to be resolved.  Recovery stalls.  And because each grief journey is unique and different, each stumbling block is unique and different as well.  Maybe it is a mental image that won’t leave you alone - some picture that keeps replaying in your mind.  Maybe it is something you said or your loved one said that keeps ringing in your head.   Or maybe it is a question your heart keeps asking, begging for some answer.  I believe that everyone who loses a child has memories or thoughts that they long to either erase, change or resolve.  

Some people call this “being stuck”, but that suggests we are doing something wrong.  I think there are simply some aspects of grief that are harder than others.  There is nothing wrong in taking extra time to work through the hardest parts of this heart wrenching journey.    

Poet Ranier Maria Rilke says it this way:

“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart . . .

try to love the questions themselves

like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you

because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will then gradually,

without noticing it,

live along some distant day

into the answer. “