The Waves of Grief

Grief comes in waves, yes, but never in stages like everybody says. Grief comes in a spiral, finding its way back to you over and over and over, year after year after year, sometimes deeper, sometimes smaller, but most certainly, it will always come back. It lives here, in the tissues, coming and going, running in circles, up and down the layers and layers of heartbreak. It comes in waves, yes, and in buckets of shame and sadness, in flickers of hope, and gut punches of wanting anything other than this part of you to be missing.  

And if it’s right down the block with cold shoulders and a drug problem, it’ll lodge itself in deeper tissues, embalmed in an excruciating longing for what could have been and what still could be. Because it still could be. 

Because it still could be, it hangs in the air all the time, a humid, hazy, crystalized cruelty, the dull colors of the world, heavy like its shadow is tied to the ends of your feet. It’s all-consuming and often unannounced; the cycles of grief are ancient, their wisdom needs no introduction. It comes in waves, yes, and it comes in droves and whispers and peeks at the possibility that what’s been lost can always be found again. 

It comes in waves on drowsy, rush hour drives, in street sign after street sign on the route you follow every night, before and after but still every time. And as it makes its way back home again, it runs its hands through the branches of every bush, dances its fingertips on flower petals and fence poles, counting sidewalk cracks and wanting so badly to turn around and turn back time. It’s a hopelessness that echoes down the alleyways, bouncing back and forth off garage doors, sprawling itself over every pebble and pothole, then reaching for the sky. 

And the sound, its song– it, too, comes in waves, and in silent moments, loaded with the pain of not knowing. But it does know, deeply, the kind of death that’s void of certainty. It replays memories, rewrites them and writes new ones about everything that could be. Because it still could be. 

There is hope yet to be had even riding the most treacherous waves. Grief is a captain of loyalty and faith and rises the most high for impossible occasions. There is a sickness on the sea that has no remedy but to throw on a life jacket, hold on and hope the ocean is co-conspiring with the universe to toss you toward the shore before the tide rolls in. The sun still bounces atop walls of water that are too tall to climb. It still shines on the face of the precarious, expectant and determined gusts of wind that keeps your sails out of the water. Knot after knot after knot, may we never get to the end of the rope, may we never be chosen to pull the anchor back onto the boat when the time has come to give the breeze back control. Because the time has come to let go. Because we’re the only ones meant to make it back to the beach. 

Grief comes waves, yes, and it rests on the tips of the toes that have shown up to greet them, gripping the sand, holding their hands. The tide rolls up and back and knows it could take you out, conspire with the current– at any moment you could drown. 

Grief walks the shoreline, admiring dried up castles, soggy strings of seaweed, shells filled up with memories and washed up what-could-be's. 

Because it still could be. 

Because it still could be, it fills its pockets with trash and treasures, dirty fingernails and pruning palms wrapped tightly around all these gifts it hopes to offer, to lay down at the ocean’s altar, a prayer that the storms will only make us all stronger. A prayer for all the ones that we can be sure we’ll chase after. A prayer that the lost ones will keep their heads above the water. 

Grief comes in waves, yes, and they will always rise again after their arms take us under.