Grief is what you do

Here is the power duo Avy and Bennett!   Aren't they fabulous?

Sandy and Avy came over tonight for a little soup and playtime.  It is hard and good to have people like Sandy and Ruth C around.  When we talk we remember Ruth and share the hole left in our lives.

Ruth C sent me this quote

"Grief is not a feeling. Grief is what you do. Grief is a skill. And the twin of grief as a skill of life is the skill of being able to praise and love life, which means that whenever you find one authentically done, the other is right beside. Grief and the Praise of Life – the Honored Guests, at the head of the table. Grief and life, at the feast. And they are toasting you."

I received the best package from Marianna (Ruth's mom otherwise known to us as maily grandma).  In it were many good books for both me and Bennett.  One in particular "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis has touched me.  He writes about the loss of his partner from a raw place.

"It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter'.  There is death.  And whatever is matters.  And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.  I look up at the night sky.  Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them,  I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch?  She died.  She is dead.  Is the word so difficult to learn?"

I ran 2.5 miles with Zues on Mnt. Tom  - the hilly trails are tough.  

I said I would run 1000 miles in one year because I would have to run almost every day to do this.   Otherwise I would lay down and stop.