Zeina Kassem

Grief is shameless; it refuses to be ignored. If you let it have its way, it becomes fatal. If you try to remove it piece by piece, it only multiplies like a tumor. And if you try to fight it, it becomes like quicksand; you try to claw your way back to the surface, and for a second you feel the fresh air against your face, thinking you've survived, only to be pulled fiercely back down again, swallowed whole, nothing left.

It's as though you had lost an arm or leg but still instinctively reach out to feel your missing limb or try to walk again, placing your entire weight on something that is no longer is there.

I watched life and death unfold like a dance on the side of that road. My son was born with a bloodstained face and he died with blood from the accident covering that same face.

Our dead become the photographs and words we hang on the walls, but they also hang on the walls of our hearts, the windows of our lips, and the sobs in our voices.

I wish I had lost an arm or a leg. It would have been much easier than losing a part of my heart, which lives on, but now beats to a different rhythm.

From cradle to grave, Talal sprinted through life.I never did see a life extinguished so abruptly.

The beauty of the sea is that it never shows any weakness and never tires of the countless souls that unleash their broken voices into its secret depths.

It's as though you had lost an arm or leg but still instinctively reach out to feel your missing limb or try to walk again, placing your entire weight on something that no longer is there.

That's when it hit me; my sunglasses were buried in the grave where my Talal lay. Yes, my sunglasses were buried with him. But oh, how I wish my eyes had gone with him instead.

I don't think I ever fully understood before now the old saying that goes: "A mother's heart loves her young one until he grows; her ill one until he heals; and her traveler until he returns."I have experienced all kinds of waiting; I've waited for my young to grow and the sick to heal, but I am still waiting on my little traveler and I do not know how long it will be until I see him again.

I could only liken it to the strength of a wheat stalk, which when struck by a storm, bends to the ground, but does not break. This stalk of wheat stands tall like a spear in a tempest, clinging to the earth where its roots are embedded deep, embracing the sun from which it draws life.

I am from Lebanon, from Beirut and SaidaI am from the ground underneath my home I am from the trees, the cedar treeI come from Tabouleh and brown eyes, from Karim...Kassar and KassemI come from happiness and cultureFrom "Habibi" and "Hayete"I am from all religionsI am from the room beneath the stars.

Do our dreams carry messages from the great beyond, sent by the people we have lost, or are they a reflection of our desperation and wishful thinking?