Familiar Grief

 I wake this morning so thankful for the sunshine I see streaming through the window. I wake so thankful for the day ahead , a day I can stay home and a day I hope to write many new words. I woke from a dream that left me with the title of today's blog. In the dream I realized I had become familar with grief , used to a loss that was like a constant companion. In the dream I was told that Gladys was in a trailer in the parking lot of the nursing home where she lived her last couple of years. I was told I should be visiting her there and that she was alone and never saw anyone. I wondered why she was there and hadn't been allowed to stay in her room at the nursing home so she would have people around. In the same jumbled dream it became Zac in the trailer and I felt so guilty that I hadn't regularly gone to see him thinking if I had I might have been able to get him back home. Strange dream leaving me with the question of familiar grief. I have been thinking a lot in the last few days of the families who are approaching the first anniversary of the horrendous Nova Scotia shootings of last April. I can only imagine the pain and suffering the loved ones left behind have endured this past year. I hold each one in my prayers.I  can extract no profound  wisdom from my dream but I do understand how grief becomes a part of who we are and I still marvel at the fact we can stumble our way through it. No choice really except the choice to see the sunshine, allow joy to accompany sorrow and keep putting our feet on the floor each morning and carrying on.