WHY

This journey of tomorrow, of moving forward, doesn't come without what feels like unexpected U-turns. When you think you've passed through this place before, you find yourself back in all too familiar surroundings. I thought for sure I had already passed through the hills, the ups and downs of my question of "WHY!?" I was making our bed this morning and enjoying my quiet time with the sun pouring through our window. Out of nowhere a rush of tears and unexpected "Why" clouded my heart and my mind. "This isn't fair" I thought, "I would have been so good to them. Why was it that my only time with them in my arms was during their transition from life to death? Shouldn't a mother have more time with her children?"

C.S. Lewis said the following after the death of his wife, "Grief is like a long and winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape...Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley isn't a circular trench. But it isn't. There are partial recurrences but the sequence doesn't repeat."

As some of the initial tears have dried, I re-read something a wise man named Richard Rohr wrote on grief. "There is no one to blame, there is no one to hate. Although we’ll try in the early stages of grief and suffering, but if you let it keep teaching you, it keeps expanding you and expanding you to the great compassion, where it is not you who understands but you are standing under the mystery. You will be willing to live with hope, which means without total resolution, without perfect closure."