I received the most curious letter in the mail last Wednesday. It was apparently sent to a random address, and landed by chance in my mailbox….

To whomever the die is cast upon:
I know not your identity, nor your character,
But I know that which defines you,
For I know that you, as one of us, are a creature of Grief.

We are all newcomers to Grief —
Each and every time
It sinks its icy claws into us,
we feel its pain again, always new, always fresh.

Grief is not like a legion of scarlet-clad enemies on a battleground…
For however much we train in preparation for our inevitable clash with it…
Our armor will never be thick enough, and our shields will be polished up to a point
Where they are mirrors, and useful only to look upon the enemy within ourselves.

No matter how much experience we amass with Grief,
We can never anticipate where and how its strikes will land,
We can never lay down rules for it to follow…
And our constant struggles to control it are futile.

When Grief in all its terrible glory comes,
We know not how to fight it but with itself.
For in the moment, Grief is a flame that cannot be extinguished…
And a raging storm that extinguishes all else.

Grief appears in many different forms, many different places.
In ego, in selflessness, in fear, in anger, in hate, in…
In love. We can only put off Grief, let it build up for some later, distant moment,
When we sit by ourselves in a dark room, next to a window’s view of black snow.

Grief’s sword, though sharp, never inflicts fatal wounds —
No, Grief doesn’t possess that much mercy.
Instead, it leaves a hollow hole in one’s body,
An ache that never fully heals.

Grief is a visitor, stopping by each of our homes,
But this guest cannot be denied entry.
It comes and lies in your bed with you. And when it leaves,
its nightmares remain, trapped in the sweaty sheets.

If ever we prepare our defenses against Grief’s next onslaught,
We will find that Grief exists not only outside us, waiting to charge when our doors open,
But also in the most sacred chamber of our soul, locked within us…
Grief’s forces destroy us from the outside as well as the inside… it loses itself in our being.

Grief is a mathematical number without an inverse.
For that which declares itself the repairer of Grief’s wound — happiness —
Is merely a sham and a fake, and cannot exist without consequences…
There is no way back to the Identity of this set once we reach Grief.

I am truly sorry for that which ails you,

A Neutral and Unknowing Party in Your Conflicts

P.S. One last note, to sum it all up, Grief is like a double-length episode of an Indian soap-opera with songs from a new Justin Bieber album in it.