Grief

What do you do when your heart is filled with grief? When no matter how hard you try to move on, you still go back to that one thing that has given you so much misery?

I had a friend once who was so consumed with his grief. He tried to put on a brave front but at the end of the day when he’s alone, away from everyone else, he goes inside himself and replays the injustice he felt was done to him over and over again. He once confided to me in a drunken stupor and said that he was going out of his mind.

What do you say to that? What can you tell a person who’s doing his best to keep it together, and yet deep inside so broken that he feels there’s no way for him to pick up the pieces of his shattered self? I was at a loss when he poured out to me his silent suffering. I couldn’t find any word of comfort. I do not even know if there was anything I could say that would make him feel better.

On the night that he was to go away, I joined him in drinking one bottle after another. The number of beer bottles we had was more plentiful than the number of words that passed between us. He gave up everything the week before that; his job, the friends he met along the way, the way of life he’s gotten used to. I did not presume to judge him nor counsel him. It would take a man much wiser than I am to piece together words that would become phrases of wisdom and understanding.

He left the following morning.

He left without saying goodbye although the bottles that we laid to waste were more eloquent than any man-made ode awkwardly said to a friend from someone who would soon be leaving. I never heard from him again.

I do not know if sitting beside him that night helped in dissipating some of the anger that ate away portions of his heart. I just know that I had to be there if only for the sake of occupying that empty seat across the table. I would have gladly accepted some of the pain he was feeling, had he asked me to, had it been possible. But it was his personal anguish, something that can only be observed from across a table.

Grief is something that sometimes tears at the fabric of life long friendships.

It’s been years since I’ve last seen him yet every once in a while when I’m holding a bottle of beer, I still say a silent toast to that friend hoping that the years have been good to him and that he’s finally able to shed the cloak of grief that has for so long suffocated him.

Here’s to you mate.