The Rise and Fall of Grief

Well I'm too lazy to try to turn this idea into a poem and don't want to lose the idea so here it is, a contemplation on how I experience grief.

Grief brings to me a wash of powerful emotional responses that I feel but do not understand. I am held captive by those emotional responses and must endure them as one caught in a wild ocean surf. These responses -- well heck, they're reactions -- roar and recede, rise up and draw back, cause pain without solace, scrape me raw and leave me bruised and tumbled and sore. They are to be endured. I know that, like the tide, they will crescendo, withdraw, and fade. I will be left on the shore to heal, and as the roaring surf recedes, my strength will return.