The Eye of the Storm

Storms are a lot like grief.

Sometimes they build slowly, and sometimes they come seemingly out-of-nowhere to cause mass destruction.

A tornado rips everything to shreds that stands in its path. The whirling vortex of emotions doesn’t discriminate whether or not the person who died was young and healthy with their whole lives ahead of them or very old with a heart full of memories and a photo album of grandchildren. Tornadoes don’t care, and neither does the pain of this loss.

The rattling of an earthquake jumbles all the thoughts and feelings of the future that you thought was in front of you and lets these images plummet to the depths of our planet’s fiery core, never to resurface.

The waves of a tsunami can and will engulf every last ounce of strength and sanity you have left, and there won’t be even the slightest bit of remorse. Dead Men Tell No Tales has never rang so true.

The winds of a hurricane are so strong that even the most durable hearts aren’t immune to the power that they bring. The vengeance of the sea brings forth a level of devastation that cannot ever be fixed with time alone. When Katrina’s rage swallowed entire cities, it wasn’t “time” that rebuilt what was lost. Those who stood in the eye of that storm know the same pain anyone knows who has experienced a traumatic loss: Life will never be the same.

Grief, like storms, have made one thing very clear to me: No matter how swimmingly you think life is going, it only takes one storm to change it all.

There is also a mutual understanding between those who are living in a Category 5 disaster that, oddly enough, the calmest place to be is in the eye of the storm.

There is stillness and quietness with sitting in the heart of something so horrific. Therein lies the most vital part of surviving a loss of this caliber: Stay present; stay centered. Trying to run away from any storm will never result in any sort of healing.

Feel the feels, breathe, and stay in the eye of the storm. It’s the only way out.