It’s 1:00 in the morning and I can’t sleep. I haven’t written in a while as the words almost hurt and the grief does. I’ve been thinking about this grief, living this grief. The acute exquisite grief of hearing my friend was put on the terminal list at Providence after collapsing at home. The only hope–a surgery that might also kill her. Then she makes it through surgery. But each day now a vigil. No cure.

The continuing grief of my mother who feels she is in some sort of limbo, no longer knowing where her home is and not understanding why we don’t come to get her. The second fracture now has led to a third. Her mind remembering less and less and unfortunately, unable to remember that my siblings visit outside her window and I send cards and call. A grief of losing her before she dies, a grief of sensing her abandonment, a grief of not being able to be by her side because of the corona virus.

Grief for all those dying alone. Grief for separation of families and friends. Grief for the homeless and vulnerable with this virus, grief for those who have lost jobs and hope. And not knowing when it will end.

And then this grief of our, my, racism revealed yet again in the death of George Floyd. Grief that I have been silent. Grief of the suffering this has caused. Grief grief grief that as my 23 and Me genetic site tells me, we are 99.5% the same–and yet we see only the .5% difference. It’s incredible. And in seeing it, we fear, judge and oppress. I grieve our human race. For a species called homo sapiens, literally meaning “wise ones”, we have such a long way to go to truth and wisdom.

But what I’ve also learned about grief, is that it comes from the same place as love–my heart. There is a grief of loss, a grief of compassion, a grief of suffering yet they all come from the heart. The greater the grief, the greater the love of what is grieved. I don’t reject my grieving; I won’t try to avoid it. It may lead me home.

I am not writing anything terribly original in this post. But I am writing it down here in the darkness, sending it out. Not staying silent about our shared human condition. Trusting in the power of Love.