When a beloved of yours leaves the Earth, friends give you comfort, but it comforts you not. You want your beloved returned as before. Through the blur of your tears, there is some appreciation for your friends' words, but the one comfort you want is not given to you. No one will even give you hope that your loved one will appear in the flesh even if only once more, even if only for a moment. There is an irrefutable law of no return. There are no maybes about it.

You don't care at the time that there is existence somewhere. It is nice talk. A lot of good it does you. You cry for what was. You can't let go of it. You are unable to act as if you had no care in the world. Your heart is bleeding, and you don't want comfort. You want your loved one back.

Your heart is a war-torn field. You shake your head at the notion that flowers will grow there again. And yet, this is also an irrefutable law. Flowers will grow. Your heart will stop bleeding. You will think about other things. You will learn to miss, not less, but with less searing pain. The open wounds mend. There are scars. It is not perfect. It is not as it was. And yet, with the scars, you go forward.

There comes the time when there is merriment. You are not being disloyal. You are not being a good sport either. There just comes a time when your heart will not be denied a flash of humor, a flash of interest, a thought of something other than your heartbreak. Your eyes begin to look up, and, why, there is some sun there. The sun is still here. What an amazing discovery! And yet that moment of merriment carries its own pain.

Recovering from grief is not abandoning your loved one, beloveds. You are simply taking the knife out of your heart. You must. It has been there long enough. You cannot stay forever in mourning.

There comes a time when you get up from your woe. The wound is less acute, yet it is still there. Leave it like knitting beside your chair. It will wait there for you.

Something dear was taken from you, so it feels. And you are left, as long as you shall live, without what was so dear.

A sweater was finished.

And now perhaps it is time to crochet. You start another project. Maybe you start many. You do not know how they are going to come out. All you know is that you have more to do than retrace all the stitches from before.

Solitude is more, and solitude becomes a friend. You hear your own thoughts. You answer yourself. Your heart no longer drones out everything but your grief.

You are reawakening to life. This is what you are meant to do.

Leave your mourning now for the sake of those who moved on. They deserve more than your tears. Perhaps they are tired of your grief by now too. Are they being disloyal to you?

Not at all. They are being loyal to love. They are being loyal to life. They are never going to leave you, nor you them. They just want you to start dancing again. They do not want a tomb as a memorial to their love. They want you to sing a little tune, perhaps dance a little jig, in their memory.

They want to kiss you good night and have you sleep well. They want to kiss you good morning and see that you go on to your day and make some happiness there.