I remembered how long it took.  A year.  Two years.  Five years.  For some, resolution came not in the absence of grief, but the understanding that loss and mourning are part of a life fully lived.  In no case did anyone's mourning take a few weeks.  No matter what a client did or didn't do - the grief took as long as it took.

So, I was troubled by the too easy grief medicine prescribed by the coach of Jack's and Connor's basketball team in yesterday's Oregonian story on the aftermath of the tragedy that had occurred three short weeks ago. 

Coach Dave Hancock says players are tired emotionally, mentally and physically. Many are starting to get sick as their bodies wear down from the physical stress that accompanies grief.  "Most of us," says senior Spencer Dunlop, "haven't slept through the night since it happened."...The week after the deaths, SEHS staggered its boys and girls basketball games, making sure there was "a community event" every night. 

"Idleness," Hancock says, "is the worst thing for grief."  

That may be true for the coach - these are not the first losses of his players he has known - but it might also be true that these exhausted young men need not to keep busy busy busy.  Perhaps they need to go on a version of the Australian native peoples' walk-about - if not on the land, then in their own memories and sorrows. Perhaps they could find solace in a campfire, a quiet night, the company of friends who understand.  

And you?  If you read this post, you most likely have lived through or are living through losses that seem unbearable.  Perhaps you have discovered that pills and the medication of busyness have left you with a stubborn ache and a sense of emptiness. Perhaps you are learning that grieving a beloved, partner, parents, child, cat, dog, place, career, obsession or drug is a teacher who ignores time.  Perhaps you have begun to listen to that harsh teacher.  Perhaps you are learning the essence of this poem:

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.          —Naomi Shihab Nye

And this song that kept me going in the wild yearnings and sorrows of my early Twenties: 

You can't hurry love; no, you just have to wait; you got to trust, give it time;

no matter how long it takes... You Can't hurry Love, Diana Ross and The Supremes