It's amazing to me how the heart functions and heals. Both physically and figuratively.  When you lose someone it feels like waking up in the morning will be impossible. Like your heart is going to explode.   Enjoying your favorite food again, laughing, and smiling all seem like a foreign concept. Undeserved almost...because your loved one cannot share in these things either. You also fear another loss, for now you know the agony that comes with such an enormous loss.  I still shutter to think about it.  You can empathise with someone and imagine how they are feeling, but until you lose someone you love, you truly sympathize with their loss.  And with their grieving.  But as they say, life, for the most part, has to go on for those of us still living. Though mornings feel different- nighttime and sleep are never the same.

 

And although as years go by you are able to reminisce without falling apart, go to familiar places without feeling crushed at heart, the memory and the loss never leaves you. It's there, everyday, a presence that looms over you.  

 

   Flashbacks- Dad bopping up and down in the blue ocean waters, my grandfather picking tomatoes out of his garden in our backyard.  The both of them telling stories and laughing over dinner in our kitchen.  It hurts when I snap back to reality and realize they cannot be here with me. To be able to rejoice in the past I have to push through the pain.

 

The past is a double edged sword, the pain is a necessary evil. For it to go away means you stop thinking of your loved one.  For many of us, that simply cannot be.  And so the heart and mind seem to make a compromise.  The heart and mind shift the pain into something else so the body can cope.....gratefulness.

 

Grateful for the time given.

Grateful for what we shared.

Grateful for the lessons learned.

Grateful for the memories.

Grateful for where I am from.

Grateful for the love.

 

 

 

Puerto Rican Cookbooks and a mortar & pestle

that belonged to my father.