Life and Death

It's been over a week since I've played in the kitchen. Over a week since I've sliced, diced, minced or slivered. My finger are itching for the smooth steel of a skillet handle. My ears are twitching for the soft shush of a saute. My nose is tingling in anticipation of the smells, my mouth is watering, my stomach is rumbling. I guess I'd better start a grocery list.

It's also been over a week since I've written one single sentence that doesn't have to do with either work or my grandfather's passing. I've been writing obituaries, tributes, funeral programs, and thank you notes. I've written lots and lots of to-do lists. I've written press releases, product descriptions and direct mail messages. But it's been too long since I've picked up a pen and just poured my thoughts, my heart, onto a page.




Life sort of stops for me for a while in the aftermath of death.

It has to. Because it's hard for me to absorb such a blow on the move. And it is a blow. And I must absorb it if I want a healthy grief. So I've had to sit with it a while. I've had to let it in.

Life sort of stopped for me over the last week.




But then, eventually, it has to keep moving.




This week is a beautiful one, if still tinged with sadness around the edges. It's sunny and cool. The world outside is completely different every single day. Being from Texas I'd never experienced a true Spring before, so I'd never truly realized just how much Spring is about transformation. Everything around me looks different with each new morning. It happens overnight, and it just keeps happening.

It's an achingly beautiful image of the way all of creation will one day be transformed, renewed, restored. Every reminder of winter's death has been swallowed up in an overflowing, riotous explosion of life. Redemption has spread itself over the landscape, and life is all that's left behind.

"What's lost is nothing to what's found...And all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup." -Frederick Buechner