‘Grief And Griever Alike Endure’

The cloud has hung over me today, and as the night falls, I can’t help but think about my grandfather and my cousin — both of whom we’ve lost in the last few months.

Death and grief are known easily. But the absence itself is harder to get used to.

Healing comes, I know. But for a time, grief dominates.

The absence, though, lingers.

New grief, when it came, you could feel filling the air. It took up all the room there was. The place itself, the whole place, became a reminder of the absence of the hurt or the dead or the missing one. I don’t believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.

Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow