The eyes
I have a young acquaintance whose husband died suddenly last year, leaving her the only parent to love and raise some young children. The eyes in her FB picture reach out. They seem to say, "I am smiling, but my eyes show how I feel." Her eyes speak wordlessly of deep seriousness, emotional exhaustion, necessary but challenging patience and bone grinding sadness.
Having crossed from the naive world to the parallel world that includes significant death, it's a look that I can recognize in other people and in my own eyes.
Then stories of grief come cascading down, like a waterfall in the spring run off. Beautiful in a way, but with a power and strength to run over what we thought was above the water line. Millions of stories, all different but all the same.
In the end, everyone has those eyes.
Can we still use them for seeing? Eventually, the wise ones say.
Having crossed from the naive world to the parallel world that includes significant death, it's a look that I can recognize in other people and in my own eyes.
Then stories of grief come cascading down, like a waterfall in the spring run off. Beautiful in a way, but with a power and strength to run over what we thought was above the water line. Millions of stories, all different but all the same.
In the end, everyone has those eyes.
Can we still use them for seeing? Eventually, the wise ones say.
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