I sit at my word processor, listening to hollowness stretch and groan like Martha Graham’s dance Lamentation (1930). In no way can I wrap words around these gyrations. Yet, they must be tended to, for that is this morning’s challenge.

Upon closer inspection, I sense grief’s thumbprint upon my psyche: its steely pressure compels crying, “Mercy! This is too much!” Such disorder muffles, drains, depresses, and ashens. Such disorder empties, hides, and stoves in. Such disorder frazzles, dulls, and flattens. It feels like I‘m feeding on my innards, already chewed on by pesky rats and spit out for more delicate fare.

Such was not my plan for this blog. I’d intended to honor a safer topic: my blooming forsythia shrub, in its sixth spring, bordering my front porch.

Instead, my woundedness must be honored. No longer is it acceptable for distractions to cushion my psyche from enervating waves that deplete energy and focus; within them, come life lessons, especially honesty and humility, if I’ve the courage to internalize them.

Key to this present lesson is in my total lack of control over my terminally ill body. Still in the aftermath of a recent vertigo spell, I’ve ramped up balance exercises to prevent falls—That may or may happen.

Just expressing this aspect of grief lightens it. In time, it will diminish altogether, until the next wave with its lesson—Transitions are filled with them, as I’m learning.