Grief

I found the ungrieved grief in me today.

I feel that sense of being abandoned and having things taken from me. My hands feel empty, and I still feel stunned at their emptiness. It feels like when you have been holding someone's hand for a long time, and suddenly, their hand is wrenched from yours. Your hand is cold, and you feel the coldness and the emptiness more profoundly because the memory of their hand is so recent it has left an imprint upon your nerves. And you look at your hand, not really knowing what it is for, if not to hold that someone's hand.
I have been given so much more than I have lost, and yet, the loss is real.

"As he stood looking down on her, what was most with him was an intense and orphaned longing that he might, if only for once, have seen the great Mother of his own race thus, in her innocence and splendour. 'Other things, other blessings, other glories,' he murmured. "But never that. Never in all worlds, that. God can make good use of all that happens. But the loss is real.'"

Perelandra, C.S. Lewis, excerpt from chapter twelve

I feel it now.