Amazing to me today how grief like this saturates not only your whole perception of reality on a larger scale, but every single detail throughout your day…I went to run a few errands this morning while someone watched Audrey and there was nothing I did not see or touch that didn’t make me think of us.  

Grief is so powerful it invades time and breaks barriers.  It reaches back into my past of beautiful memories and taints them with its haunting foreshadowing- as everything written or said takes on a double meaning.  It reaches into the future- to years from now when this is the past…and further…to my own end here when I will wonder what or who awaits me- if anything.  I still envision one scene in my mind- it is me coming back on that ship- you waving me in…I hope secretly that God will be kind and let that be my own personal experience when my time comes…even if I’m old and have forgotten it completely…I think he will for some reason.  

The amount of grief I feel is equal to the amount of love I had and have. 

The death was the factor that caused the grief and accentuated in some ways the love…taught me and showed me what was already there but I didn’t always see.  

So it’s something like this: love plus death= grief.   No, but then if the grief is equal to the love- then this doesn’t work.  This seems silly but I am really working on this.  Maybe it’s more like love=grief=death?  And if they are all equivalent- then there is hope that one will not overshadow the other?  

I have never been good at math.

“For love is as strong as death, its ardor unyielding as the grave.  It burns like blazing fire like a mighty flame.  Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.”  Song of Songs 8.6-7