"A Brick In Your Pocket"

One of the places I like to go every now and then on the web is Alex Chadwick's "Interviews 50 cents" - where Mr Chadwick sits at a card table with a couple of microphones and waits for someone to sit down and tell his or her story.


I find myself coming back to one story. It's one of the simplest, most poignant descriptions I've heard of living with loss. Alex interviews a man who is going to a baseball game in memory of his deceased son. It's about three minutes long:





There are lots of us out there, as the days slip from 30 degrees to 12 and the petals on the roses and sweet peas flutter to the ground, who might feel the weight of Fall, the heaviness of grief, start to press in on our hearts again from time to time. 


Dad compares sorrow to the pattern of waves on the beach. You can be going along quite nicely in your life when suddenly you're caught off-guard by a wave that swells and then crashes over you, tumbling you off your feet and knocking the breath out of you. When the wave has washed over you, you pick yourself up again and continue on.


Whether it's a wave or a brick, or some entirely different metaphor that sums up your feeling of loss, you are not alone.