Grief Unmeasured

I measure every grief I meet—
knowingly, they’re all related to me.
Some smaller, some larger,
but all carry weight.

Yesterday, a friend’s text arrived:
“Her daughter was shot in the head.”
The words formed a puzzle I needed to unravel:
What, why, where?
I kept asking.

Death came too soon for this young woman.
My thoughts turned to my own children—
why must mothers bury their offspring?
Black-on-black violence, a painful reality.

I reached out to my friend,
but she refused my texts and calls.
Understandable—the shock is overwhelming.

Will pain ever grow old?
Will humanity cease its violence?
Or will weapons persist indefinitely?

Why does existence hurt so much these days?
Will we run out of comforting words?

This morning’s headlines were grim:
“A young mother abandons her newborn.”
Heartless? Perhaps not.
Fear for the child’s life drove her actions.

What future awaits that abandoned soul?
What trials lie ahead?

Emily Dickinson once wrote:
“The meaning of life is just to be alive.
It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic
as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

In passing, we find solace—
a piercing comfort on our journey through Calvary.