what will your verse be?

Oh Captain, my Captain.

Robin Williams is dead. I don't know where I'm going with this. I only know I need to write in the most primal sense of the word need. Oh God. My heart hangs heavier and heavier each day. Philip Seymour Hoffman's death was another stone on my back, Robin William's is a boulder. I don't know why this is affecting me this hard. Only that I know the taste of grief and I can never get it out of my mouth. I'm running from it but my feet know the path too well. I'm overrun, overcome, attacked at all sides.

Beheadings, divorce, war, death, grief grief grief running like a river in our hands and we can't staunch the flow. Robin Williams is dead. I cannot wrap my head around this. He had children who loved him, children not his own. He was a very human human, if that makes any sense at all. Someone on my twitter stream wrote, sometimes people use humor to hide their very deep sadness. A gradual gutting. Isn't that true? How horrible it is that this is many realities, many lives. We all cary a deep sadness, like a seed growing and twisting through our veins, inside us.

Now that I'm writing, I don't know what to say. I'll stumble through this post for awhile. Here's what I wish I could do: I wish I could gather together with the world and whisper, I know. I wish I could mourn together. Brandon of Humans of New York posted an image of four women sitting together with a captain saying, we have come to sit with her in her sadness. This is what we need. Sometimes, there is no fixing. That is, there is no fast way to feel better. It's a slow journey, an arduous trek we undertake with the help of those walking alongside us. The surest way to fall back and decide you're through is to walk alone.

I am so tired of pain. I am so tired of grief. I am so tired of seeing brokenness in people's eyes like it's normal everyday life. This dichotomy of weeping and laughing wears me thin. I want to dance, but I can only keen like a mourner. This is my life now and with every day that passes, I don another veil. I don't know many things about life, but I know that we spiral through pain and our pain is like a ring we carry inside us. We are layered.

I know the darkness of depression, I know the haze of sadness thick and smothering like old blankets in small closets with only blackness for a light. I know that sometimes reaching out to open the door takes more energy than we have. Please, I pray, keep reaching.

I don't understand, I don't understand. Not knowing is harder in these moments. I grasp at any straw, any light I can hold and I hoard it like a starved dog cradles a bone, to the chest. Though we deal with a very present darkness, we are never alone. We are not without hope. Rest in peace, Robin Williams. Rest in peace, oh broken world. Let light reign, let light in. Jesus, come come come.