Why We Grieve

 Voice of the Mountain

by Shawn K. Inlow

I have been walking around the Mountain for almost a week now and have not been able to correspond, dear reader.  I can scarce put my thoughts together.

I've just lost my mother.  She was 86 years old and in a nursing home and she held on five years after cancer ambushed and made quick work of my father.  When you lose the one you've devoted your life to, you become diminished.  You fail.  Your mind stops working.  You shrink away into the night of life and become a shadow.

Maybe those of you who are old orphans like me have felt this way.  Maybe you know what it is, being all out of parents.

I have not grieved yet.  I'm not hurting.  I've not yet had that quiet moment when the tears come.  This is a disruption.  A remote control on terminal pause.  I can't seem to budge the frame forward.  I am emotionally stuck.  It is a void.  Perhaps, spiritually, I'm touching the hem of death.  Perhaps I am grieving and it just doesn't feel like anything.

Maybe we grieve because we know we are next.  

The clock is short so you better finish that painting, write that song, write your story so it has beauty and meaning when you go.  Help.  Someone.  You need to appreciate what you have.  You need to give away whatever you can.

For me, I'm feeling particularly cut off because I don't know my roots.  If you are walking across a mountain pass in Afghanistan and you come upon a goat-herd and you ask him who he is he is likely to tell you, in order, in about 15 minutes the names in his ascendency down a thousand years to the son of so-and-so, "who is me."

In my life, I knew my parents but I don't know what they were thinking.  Who they were.  I did not know my grandparents almost at all.  I don't know who they were and, thus, really have no foundation myself.

And if the root dies, what becomes of the leaf?

Time flies.  So I reach out to you, dear reader, to offer what kindness I can and maybe we can walk the road together a while.  Share a smile.  Make a friend.  Roll our eyes in the direction of the grey, greedy men who devour our world.

My father said greed was the real problem in the world.

My father told me I had to stop and smell the roses in life.

Mother shared her faith with me.

I'm listening.

Shawn Inlow

Osceola Mills, Pa.