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"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain!”--Dolly Parton
Let me get this out of the way right now: I feel the pain, the loss, the grief. I know that hard ache of losing someone dear to you. Amongst the long six years of recent, my boyfriend and I lost so many between the two of us, like one or more a month, and then March he left me. The grief I hold in missing him is deep and resounding yet I'm not cursing the year I've had, I'm living within that pain.
My life has been anything but rosy, none of us have. Yet, I do recall a friend saying, when in my early 30s, divorcing my abusive husband, "For a young person, you sure have been through a lot!" At that point, I was so overwhelmededly flooded with the peace of being free from him that I laughed her comment off. However, it is true and I knew it just as much as she did. From an abusive college boyfriend who would not leave, long after I ended the relationship, to a church too confining, teetering on cult-like and embrace of the purity culture, to the abusive husband, a myriad of toxic friendships, the dawn of the new age of Covid19, then the loss of my beloved human...it's been a lot but through all that darkness, I have prevailed, healed, found myself through it, and persevered.
Yep, bad shit happens. Cars break down, money is tight, loved ones die (including celebrities), corrupt leaders take control and the downtrodden feel the weight of such upon their neck even deeper...it can sometimes feel too much...except it's not. It is what it is.
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That's not a cause of downward spiral into the doom and gloom. Life is not always to be joyous, laughter, rosy days of love and light...it will be messy, dark, gloomy, just as the seasons change. But amidst the darkness, the joy will return and is yet even during difficulties always still readily available.
In the wake of the loss of Dolly Parton, of Tim Curry, of whoever beloved lost, know that the reason for the tears and deep sorrow is because of the love, laughter, light once shared with them. And, the reality is, it is still available within you forever.
I'm not saying never to grieve, to cry and groan, to scream. Rather, do that freeily, let it all flow outward without constraint, whatever the emotion that befalls in that singular moment.
My boyfriend, Michael, always said that he wanted his celebration of life to be full of laughter, because God knows he gave us enough fodder. I would reply that yes, I will laugh but I'm also going to cry. And such continues as I slowly ebb my way through life without him, my human, finding whatever joy I can within the simplicity and the memory.
In life, bad shit happens, rain must fall, but so to, the flowers come anew. Amidst the pain, we find joy once more. Joy for the knowing the one we lost, joy for the simple pleasures. Although the anger of cursing a year or the pleading for 'no more suckiness please' feels justified, the more we balk against the bad weakens the acceptance, the loss of the lesson that life is full of light and darkness, endless circles ebbing about seeming to be out of control lest we surrender.
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