The cruelty of grief isn’t within me. It’s within the carefully avoided glances, the tiptoe around my broken heart. It’s in the judgment that forgets that I am not normal, typical right now. I am hollowed out, missing, rebuilding.

The cruelty of grief is when I am held to the same rubric as someone who is still living their chosen life. Even in the discomfort or pain of that life, they are still choosing it. I did not choose this life and to measure my worth/value/productivity with the same yardstick is a cruelty.

Kindness looks like the check-in despite a lack of response, in the gracious rescheduling again, in the dropped off meal or the offer to watch over my child.

In myself, Kindness looks like space. Spaciousness. A lack of sharp corners and bars to be held to. It looks like, for the first time, time. And how convenient that the entire world is taking time right now. My grief was willing to travel with me through work and play, only occasionally throwing temper tantrums when it went ignored too long. Now, my grief gets to sit with me while I read, write, watch TV, hang with my kid, go for a walk, silently stew about the state of the world–coronavirus.

It is happy for the time and I am happy to hear it. It is not wrong in its feelings–anger, injustice, sadness, ambivalence, joy, terror, ennui–all are right and welcome.

The pause, the kindness the world has granted me, allows me to be a hostess to my grief. And I give it coffee and cookies and a soft place to sleep with clean sheets and flowers. And I’ll make a home for it for as long as it wants. I’m not ready to let go of it yet, and it’s not ready to leave.