A Bridge Between — grateful, yet grieving

The month of June is filled with celebrations. Ceremonies are part of the rituals and rites of passage from one transition to another. Whether walking across the stage or walking down the aisle, the past is in the rearview mirror and the future awaits. The best visual I can think of to represent this is a bridge. Bridges connect and create a distance between two points. 

As I remembered my 41st wedding anniversary this past week, I sensed my grief as a bridge between my life before and my life now.

C. S. Lewis said, “Bereavement is an integral and universal part of our experience of love. It is not the truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure.” Grief is the bridge that separates us yet connects us to our loved one.

In reflecting on this quote, there’s a process, not an arrival. Grieving is the only journey I’ve been on where I haven’t arrived. I will never be there yet. Within the context of grief being both a journey and bridge, there is no standing still. There’s motion, back and forth with stops and starts.

In recounting my wedding anniversary, I purposely looked at pictures of my wedding day; the beginning of our life together. As I smiled with an ache in my heart, I thought of the quote by C.S. Lewis, “not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure.” Like a bridge, I’m connected to my life before, but continue to move forward in the next phase.