Grief is an emotional, a multifaceted journey that we all go through once or many a times in our lives on account of loosing a loved one or due to sudden culmination of a relationship. The experience of going through the grief and overcoming it varies from individual to individual. When Elisabeth Kubler- Ross deconstructed the experience of Grief which was later called as Kubler-Ross model of Grief, it was criticised by many having a linear approach towards overcoming grief. Our experience of grieving may be as much unique as we are, paving the way for the non linearity in our approach of handling the grief.
Nonetheless, it is important to grieve in order to process the complex emotions. Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist meditation teacher offers his insight in this regard;
“Grief is one of the heart’s natural response to the loss. When we grieve we allow ourselves to feel the truth of our pain, the measure of betrayal and tragedy in our life. By our willingness to mourn, we slowly acknowledge, integrate, and accept the truth of our losses. Sometimes the best way to let go is to grieve.”
The experience of grieving and going through the pain may open new doors of our being, the territories that we had never been to, as Khalil Gibran famously said;
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses of your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so you must know pain”
Needless to say, despite the importance of grieving, it is equally important to move forward in our lives and one way to move forward is to be grateful to the joyful moments that we had with the person we lost or departed from, for any reason.
Keeping in mind the same thought, I penned down the following piece of poetry:
Why did you grieve?
feeling yourself broken,
like it fell down the rose petals,
having blossomed at the fullest.
Didn’t you feel the joy,
the joy of flowering once?
Why did you grieve?
when your heart got broken,
having opened it to someone.
As if you had opened a window
and the wind swept everything away.
Didn’t you see that it came intermittently,
the sun rays as well?
Why did you grieve?
when tears trickled down.
As if the dew drops,
rolled down the rose petals.
Didn’t you feel,
it was the melted pain
that lay frozen within?
Why did you grieve?
when the flow ceased to be;
stinking, nearing to death.
Didn’t you feel,
the joy of flowing once?
When I finished writing the poetry, I again remembered Kahlil Gibran and what he had said;
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven.”
(The piece of poetry written above had originally been published in an anthology called ‘Melange’ published by Poets Corner, Delhi)