Saturday, October 24, 2009

Head and Heart

Grief is a process of the head and heart coming together. The head knows what the heart is not yet ready to believe. It is almost 5 years since my brother died and I recently felt the head and heart split once again. It was as intense as a tree being hit by lightening. It reminded me that grief is a life long process.
My brother's widow recently adopted a baby from Kazakhstan. We had the opportunity to meet the new addition to our family as they had a brief lay over at the St. Paul/ Minneapolis Airport last week. As I held this beautiful 8 month old brown eyed boy in my arms, my heart spoke these words, "He looks just like his daddy, my brother." Then my head abruptly jarred my heart back to reality-David is not fathering children, he is dead.
Comfort briefly comes when the heart looses its memory of the death. There is pain when the head calls us back to the painful reality of the death. Grief is a long, long process of the head and the heart coming together.

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