As we age,
We,
In a sense,
Become someone new,
Even as we become someone old.
Our past self,
Who was so young,
Who would dance in the dark with friends under the moon,
Is now like some other person living on some distant island surrounded by a dark sea.
We did not know then that we were so young.
But time passes and gradually,
Cell by cell,
We age,
Until one day we awaken to find that the person we were has long since departed.
It's not uncommon for a kind of grief to settle in,
Though we might not know exactly what it is we are grieving.
We are grieving the passing of our younger selves,
Those whom we love so much,
Whom we first learned to love,
Out from under the protective care of our parents.
That first budding of youth,
With our limbs so nimble,
Our laughs so ready,
And the whole world before us like an empty playing field,
Just waiting to see what we could do.
But way leads on to way,
And now we are at the other end of that journey.
We may look back with fondness,
With pride even,
And still,
The entry point of that path is a long way away,
Lost in the mists of memory.
And if our paths have been troubled ones,
A series of starts and halts and redirections,
Of getting lost and never quite being found,
Well then,
The memory is even more muddled,
The pain a bit more confused.
We grieve the one we've lost,
Even as we may now celebrate who we've become.
From the turmoil of those early years,
Those unprocessed emotions,
The scars of trauma,
We have climbed our way out and we stand here now on this shoreline,
Less tethered by the constraints of unconscious desires.
That is what tempers the grief.
We are here now,
More solid,
Wiser,
Less afraid.
Yes,
We may grieve the loss of that youthful self,
But we do so with a gentle smile,
With strength in who we've become that allows us to assess that loss through a curtain of love.
