The time it’s hardest to write is when your heart is broken. Not sad, not
down, broken. The idea that heavy emotions are good for writing is ridiculously
wrong. It’s only helpful when you finally crawl out of the pit and can reflect.
When the pain hits, you’re curled into a ball, trying to survive. It’s not the
time to focus on your word craft, it’s the time to reach and grab hold of the
people in your life who are there to save you.

Grief is like a thick fog, clouding everything over, making the air itself
heavy. It’s hard to hit the keyboard and pull off anything resembling eloquence
when you’re under a metaphorical wet blanket. I know grief. He’s a long-time
acquaintance and we’ve learned to live together. That’s what happens when your
child dies at 17. You either accept it and find a way to live with the jagged
thing now living inside you or you go mad, check out, or find an end of some
sort.

Even knowing grief like I do, the recent death of my 19-year-old brother has taken
me to my knees. As it should. Love has a cost. He was a bright light, all
energy and possibility. The world does not make sense without him. Something
has gone wrong. All the love I felt for him is now cut loose, unmoored. The
pain is precise, reminding me in sharp detail of what we all have lost. Despite
this loss and every one before it, I still say, loving is
always worth the price.

Love is never wasted. I fully believe that. The time you spend giving your
heart to anyone is not in vain. Love is eternal. It has its own value. It’s the
best thing we humans do. One of my all-time favorite C.S. Lewis quotes is on
love: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be
wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you
must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with
hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the
casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark,
motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become
unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

I will always choose the pain, choose to be vulnerable, breakable. The
alternative is unthinkable.