The Theory of Grief

By Beth Lynch - Year 13, Logan Park High School

I see grief in white.

Pure, blinding white.

Like the colour of a wedding dress.

Or my chest of drawers.

Or paper.

I think people like to believe that grief is something dark and twisted and gruesome because it's easier to think of it that way.

It's the same reason why we hide under the blankets when we hear strange noises in the night, because even though it's still dark under the covers - not to mention no less safe in reality - we can at least pretend for a moment that we don't have to face what's out there - when what's out there is only our imagination.

Human beings have always had a natural fear of the dark.

And so maybe it is easier to say that grief is something black and evil, because that's everything we're already scared of.

So how can we possibly be even more scared by something that we've already faced?

Though the tears are clear like fresh ice on the lake.

Before everyone ruins it over with skate-blade scars.

I think we're so scared of feeling something new, it's better to just face it as we do with every fear.

Fear is something different, something that makes us weak, something to reject.

We humans hate to be so.

And grief is something much the same.

Grief is the thing we fear.

Because at its base, grief is a reaction to fear.

Because grief happens when something changes.

I don't like change either.

That sharp taste of shock as life bulldozes into you unexpectedly, crinkling and distorting your reality.

A piece of paper you scribbled across because someone jolted your arm. The ink suddenly halfway over the page.

It's the sentence you wrote down, and had to rewrite because it no longer made any sense.

The finality of an inken line scratching across the words like harsh sandpaper.

And it's even worse when you know change is coming and you can't do anything about it.

It's the grief of a first love, one you know must come to an end.

The pure joy shining out like morning sun, filtering golden through a window. Clouds coming over.

It's the grief of the phone call from your grandma with teary eyes, telling you that the test results came back positive.

The physical strength it takes to hold back the surge of emotion.

I wasn't one for lifting weights or running rings, but to hold back your own self?

The pit of dread lies in your stomach, and not a tasty pit, like the pomegranate seeds, or one surrounded by soft delicious flesh, like a summer peach.

A prelude to a cacophony of feeling.

Grief can come in all kinds of colours.

Sometimes grief is red - not the dull and dark red of ripe cherries, but the bright and bitter tang of one picked too soon.

It is fire and blood.

A flush of life on one's cheeks, to keep that life still inside them.

They throw things and hit things and scream because they don't know what else to do.

Sometimes grief is blue - the bright blue that runs beneath the frozen river, the same blue that runs through your veins, blue as glass beads on your grandmother's dress.

They sink to their knees and weep and hide away within themselves because they don't know what else to do.

Sometimes grief is green as grass - freshly mown in a benevolent spring, cut too short and left with a sour scent.

It stings like nettle. An invisible thorn of nothingness that you cannot get out.

They stop speaking and doing and being because they don't know what else to do.

I have always felt that I saw things differently; that my brain didn't allow that sort of nonsense; that when broken, I could put myself back together, as easy as Lego pieces on the playroom floor.

Perhaps I was a God's momentary lapse in judgement - would we all not like to think so?

I am not a colour. I am the cold logic of a question with only one answer.

The burning of a flesh wound that rips open the skin and seals it closed in one fell moment.

My grief is white.

It shatters like glass.

It burns white hot and ice cold.

It is pure, and it is harsh, and it is true and real and pain.

It is a temporary forever.

Because to grieve is to heal.

And I don't think that is darkness.

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