The Timestamp of Grief

The Timestamp of Grief

As a Practitioner of Hope, I am humbled to be able to represent God's presence in this earth. My discourse of training and lived experiences have become my embedded pedagogy and, therefore, now my operational DNA. For me, after nearly 25+ years of being in service to God in this space of endearment, I can honestly say no amount of formal settings and/or training prepares your heart to fully release the loss of loved ones—especially those who weigh heavy in your heart.

Whether you knew their time was marred by any physical ailment, medical condition, or their lifestyle, your heart still longs for their physical presence, and your thoughts linger in a relay of looped memories, desiring deeply to make more.

One day you're on top of your mentals; the next, your knees buckle at the simplest sound, scent, or sight that reminds you, in subtle ways, of your transcendent loved one.

You tell yourself, they wouldn't want me to be suffering like this. But that does nothing to console the aching parts of consciousness that long for just a touch from them. Your heart has not reconciled with the reality your eyes see every day. This new normal is anything but normal.

People spew the most unbelievable, disturbing, and heartbreaking verbiage during times of grief, bereavement, chaos, and calamity. In a mindset resistant to change and hardened by lived experiences, it becomes easy to excuse such vile verbiage as, that's just who I am, or that's just who they are. But for the recipient of those words, in a world already riddled with confusion betwixt reality and a seemingly forced fiction, the last hit your heart needs is a poor word cipher from anyone—let alone someone you thought you could trust to lift you up when you are so torn down emotionally.

I sit in my grief, and I honor its presence in my thoughts … those that resurface with the slightest entity, unto those that pump up the cadence of my heartbeat and cause my tear ducts to fill as I remember from whence a time has gone. I don't lie to myself as though absence feels less heavy, fills less space by its weight, or resolves simply because I keep going.

My heart sees and hears the date as though it were an interloping being, vanishing and reappearing on its annual solstice. This date is time-stamped on my frontal lobe as though it is the PIN number to access a hidden treasure. But instead, it unlocks and relocks thoughts, pains, and memories on a soundtrack featuring your voice and your giggle.

I'd be lying if I said I wished I could be with you where you are right now. But truthfully, while my spirituality knows you are where I have a desire to be with you one day, that day isn't today. Today, I wish there were a cerebral cognitive cortex conjoined to a cosmological celestial realm I could access to visit with you—to ease the angst in my heart from missing you.

I leave this day choosing to traverse the trauma attached to it by holding a light up to the gift you left me in the characteristic traits I see, similar to yours, in those you touched while you were here and those to whom you gave a little of yourself that I came behind you to love.

Rest in Loving Power, Crown Prince Zephaniah, and tell all the ancestors and the elders I am grateful for all the downloads. I pray I am walking in honor of their sacrifices as I stand on their shoulders to continue building a legacy for those who will stand on mine.

#ZNAourDNA