The Sacred Ache

We are fools when we imagine that the opposite of sorrow is a light and easy gladness. That will be a mistake. The true, dark adversary of grief is "forgetfulness." Relief from grief is not brought by amnesia.

Grief is the holy, stubborn witness of the soul. It is love refusing to lay down its arms in the face of the grave. It tears at the marrow and hollows out the ribcage, yes, but that sharp wound is sacred ground.

Grief is the altar where the beloved still speaks in the quiet dust. To wish the ache away would be to barter away the name, the face, the very breath of what God once gave into your keeping.

And so, when offered the mercy of the bliss of forgetting or the burden of a bleeding memory, the faithful heart chooses the blood every time. The grief does not shrink, nor does it politely fade into the margins of the years. It remains heavy as river stone. Yet you take it up and press it to your breast. You walk on into the dusk, not because of some masochistic desire. Not because you crave the agony, but because you know that "a broken heart is a living sanctuary, while forgetting is a quiet, second death."