It’s different than morning grief.  The sun is shining straight down. There are no shadows in which to hide.  All is revealed, and today where I am the sun is hot. I feel scorched. My friend Elaine says it’s okay that I need to hibernate.  I’ve been burned. I need to wait for new skin to form before I emerge.

Today is the day of my brother’s cremation.  His wife and I talk and cry together. We are touchstones for each other, two women who love the same man but know him differently.  My grief can’t equal hers and yet there are the memories of childhood, parents, a shared DNA that seems to cry out, “Nooooo!”

We want to understand; we want to be brave and here we are connecting in shared pain and maybe that is the place where moisture connects in the flow of tears as they lubricate and cleanse.

I am oiled, bathed, possibly soothed at a level I don’t yet know.  A hidden spring comes forth or so I tell myself as tears continue to flow. I want to be brave and I know the word courage comes from “coeur” heart, and my heart is certainly involved in this process of letting go. It joins the beat and waves of love, the rise and fall of whales, and the float of feathers in air.