Grief has a way of making itself known at the most inconvenient of times, reminding me it’s always there.
Grief reminds me of an ocean. Just when I thought it was calm, the wind picks up and starts to make everything uneasy again. Grief has no timeline. It doesn’t care where I am — grief just happens. I often wish that grief would just go away and never visit me again. However, I’m always been confronted with the belief that to grieve is to have loved, and to have loved is to have lived. I will take the grief and sense of loss I feel today because I know it means I had somebody in my life who meant something to me.
The world gives one no time to grieve, to simply pause and reflect on the impact someone had on your life. We are often told to keep looking forward and not look behind. We are often told “real men don’t cry,” and to show emotion is to show weakness. I’m sorry, but that’s BS. Cry if you need to, and take the time you need to reflect on what you have lost. I’m almost 20 years old, and I cry myself to sleep some nights thinking about my dad. I don’t have any shame in admitting that, and I hope this whole saying of “real men don’t cry” just goes away.
I’m a real man, and I cry.
I’m a real man, and I grieve.
I deal with the spontaneity of my grief every day.
And just because you don’t see me crying or sad doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.
Because I do — I feel the loss of my dad every single day. And that’s never going to go away; I just have to learn to live with it.
Thinkstock image by Drimafilm