Thesaurus Meditation

I don't know why I love the thesaurus so much. I just love words and the thesaurus is like reading jazz. Take a concept, and see how many words we can use to riff on that theme. There is something beautiful about that to me. It also seems so subjective. For example, when you put happiness in the thesaurus, blessedness comes up. So does cheer, and hilarity, and laughter, and paradise. Paradise = happiness? To the thesaurus compiler, maybe, but to me, I've been depressed in paradise. Been laying on a white sanded, clear-oceaned beach crying my eyes out. Location does not equal happiness to me. Or hilarity...humor is not happiness. Something funny is temporary. I laugh all the time, but we all know that doesn't mean I am happy. Happiness is a state of being, right? Maybe one can argue that a temporary hilarity is happiness.

Because I am me, and I somehow have to dissect and analyze everything. I put grief into the thesaurus today. Just to see what comes up.

Main Entry: grief
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: mental suffering
Synonyms: affliction, agony, anguish, bemoaning, bereavement, bewailing, care, dejection, deploring, depression, desolation, despair, despondency, discomfort, disquiet, distress, dole, dolor, gloom, grievance, harassment, heartache, heartbreak, infelicity, lamentation, lamenting, malaise, melancholy, misery, mortification, mournfulness, mourning, pain, purgatory, regret, remorse, repining, rue, sadness, sorrow, torture, trial, tribulation, trouble, unhappiness, vexation, woe, worry, wretchedness

I just want to say these words together, like I want to say our children's names. One after another. Grief. Affliction. Agony. Yes. Yes. Yes...grief is all those things. But there are the small words in here that I think are why these exercises are so important for me.

Care.

Such a gentle word. Care. We all need gentle. But does this mean to care for oneself in grieving? Does it mean we mourn because we care? I clicked its hyperlink, and it read "personal interest. concern." I just love that part of the concept of grief is concern, solicitude, diligence. Care as part of grief. Of course.

Dole. I didn't exactly know what that meant in terms of grief, so I clicked it (yay, online thesaurus). Dole means allowance, allotment...charity. Charity. That didn't seem right. I mean, yes, charity would be nice, but didn't exactly hit. So, I clicked the dictionary. 5. Archaic. one's fate or destiny. Shit.

In the definition of dolor, it says passion. YES. Passion. That is what we have...a passionate understanding of how unjust this all is. A passionate love for a child we do not get to hold again. A passion for understanding, coming to a place of peace, for loving ourselves, to forgiving ourselves. We are passionate about everything surrounding our children.

But I think the word that somehow floored me the most is disquiet. Not because it was there. I would have expected it in the list, but I dictionaried it.

dis⋅qui⋅et [dis-kwahy-it]–noun 1. lack of calm, peace, or ease; anxiety; uneasiness.

Disquiet. Lack of calm, peace or ease. Isn't this it in a nutshell? Isn't this the biggest hurdle? I want to come to a place of peace with the death of my daughter, and right now, I cannot. I still cannot even believe I never get to hold her again. It hits me everyday that this is permanent, like during the night I somehow wake again with this hope that I get her again. I wonder if this defines when we are out of our actively grieving period, when we feel a sense of ease, or peace, or even calm. Last night, I just couldn't stop crying as I ached for her. How much I want her with me. How hard it is to manage all these relationships in my life, when I really only want to focus on is finding a very beautiful handkerchief to soil. When I really only want to concentrate on my sobbing, the inhales and exhales, the particular noise I never knew I could make--noises that only exist when your child dies or you give birth, and are particularly unique when both those things happen at the same time. I cannot imagine peace right now, or calm, or ease. Disquiet, that I know something or two about.