Introduction to Volume 8

What you are about to do as you share my grief journey.

This is Volume 8 of the Essays on Grief.

Looking back from today, I see a breathtaking vista of suffering, sadness and emptiness. Yet, as Volume 7 ended, I have been introduced to the most remarkable aspect of this journey.

I have been granted an extraordinary privilege.

I have been granted my heartfelt prayer for conversation.

And what a glorious transition to an unexpected level of life it has been.

As I write this - trying to put any of it in perspective is just not possible. If I could, and in my heart of hearts, want so desperately to do - summarize the amazing days I have had since God unmistakably changed this state of grief forever just 22 days ago.

In trying to absorb the un-absorable I have been led to a realization of a calm I have not had in my life for years. Many, many years.

Seemingly now perched on the highest peak of this journey, after being in abject awe of surpassing each preceding peak I had been led to reach - I marvel at God’s hand in my current state.

Being on a path of discovery - both in re-discovering my own life as I struggle to identify just what I as a person will become - as well as the incredible openness and sharing I am experiencing from the conversation I am being blessed to drink in.

I had a thought yesterday (March 21st) which I knew was not mine.

I always know when it is not a thought of my origin because the very existence of the thought was beyond me. It just popped in to my head. Within its simplicity a scope that transcends mere human thinking.

The thought? “You have something to learn from your conversations.”

Excuse me? What?

Apparently now I will fully realize that I am being taken to this new life I have finally embraced. And as the future comes to take me there - I have been given a new precious thing.

Someone to help me.

In that help is a sharing of the deepest aspects of grief.

This is a powerful new dimension of this next part of the journey.

I am ready to take it.

Let’s find out what I have to learn.