Grief is Just Love with Nowhere to go.

Riding in the passenger seat, tears fill my eyes- blurring, elongating, and distorting the normally crisp reds, whites, and greens of the street lights. I am not crying in the usual sense, more like leaking from the eyes. No noise, no movement or motion, just tears without ceasing. It reminds me of videos I have seen of the tsunami in Indonesia many years ago. It wasn't the violent wall of water I expected to see. It was more the constant encroaching of the ocean upon the land, as though no boundary had ever existed between the salty depths and the roads where cars now floated. My cheeks felt cold as the tears dried on my face. I had so many thoughts and images that filled my mind, but only one feeling. Deep, gut wrenching, overpowering sadness. I happened upon a quote last week that said something about how grief is merely love with nowhere to go. That is what I feel. I feel all kinds of love with nowhere to go. And so it creeps out of my eyes, and down my face, and nearly takes my breath away.

My uncle Phil died today.
My dad's little brother, the one he spent his youth protecting, is now gone.
Without warning.
Inexplicably.
And I cry for my dad who could not call to give me the news. Who couldn't yet speak the words into being, that his only brother is now gone.

I cry for my aunt, Pam. She is my dad's older sister. Neither of them could have ever conceived a life without their youngest sibling. How lost and sad she must feel.

I cry for his kids- my cousin Luke who has now lost both parents in just a few years. I hate that he is now raising his kids without his dad getting to see what a great job he will do. And I cry for his brother and sisters because their kids won't grow up with their grandpa in their lives.

I cry for his friends. Friends who have loved him like family. People who, unlike me, had him in their lives every day. I cry for the hole they now have in their hearts.

Riding in the passenger seat, feeling all kinds of love with nowhere to go. And so it creeps from my eyes and down my face. Yet, in the midst of this blurry sadness, my heart, which is broken in a new way today, thinks of my Uncle Phil, and smiles. This is how I know his life was lived well. I am broken over the loss of him, but I still can't help but smile at the remembrance of time spent together.