There is loss and then there is Loss. There is grief and then there is Grief. What differentiates between the two? Is solely the connection between the two people. Or do you factor in the journey to death, the story behind the loss? Is it worse to have the knowledge the you are dying? Or is that fact harder on the ones surrounding you? Is it worse to not have the chance to say goodbye to those that are left?

I have been a bit shocked to have experience levels of sorrow and depression this year that would rival the first month of her passing. It rattled my brain and my body. It has been 2 years, and yet, there were moments this past week when I couldn’t exhale without tears and crying. I can look back at the last year and see very few moments of sadness. I could talk about her without any emotion, no tears, not even watering. I could recollect tough times in our relationship almost from the outside looking in. Those on the receiving end of my verbal recollection would react with tears and sniffles while I stood there unphased by what I was saying.

Death is a crazy thing. It makes people behave to the antithesis of their character. They make terrible choices in grief. They can’t think clearly, the grief masking reality, marring their ability to anticipate consequences. Sometimes they chose to forget all that they knew when their loved one was living. That which brought closeness in the last stage of death or in the birth of the grief is gone.

Grief is cyclical. There is no reasoning to the cycles, when they appear, their order, their presentation. Grief circles are sometimes small and sometimes all encompassing. They arrive in the form of anger, sadness, depression and even antipathy.

I am sure that there are a few in my midst who think that I should be over it by now. Controlled in my sorrow and grief and memories managed.

Is suffering comparable?

Does any one really know the levels of another person’s sorrow?