{"id":662,"date":"2013-03-04T15:15:45","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T23:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carolineadejong.com\/?p=662"},"modified":"2013-03-04T15:15:45","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T23:15:45","slug":"grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/carolineadejong.com\/?p=662","title":{"rendered":"Grief"},"content":{"rendered":"I got to thinking about this quote. \u201cGrief can destroy you \u2014 or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. Or you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn\u2019t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it\u2019s over and you\u2019re alone, you begin to see that it wasn\u2019t just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together. It was everything; it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can\u2019t get off your knees for a long time, you\u2019re driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.\u201d – Dean Koontz, Odd Hours<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"