Everyone has his or her own way to cope with grief. When a loved one passes, people accept it, become angry and disillusioned or become depressed, but almost everyone is saddened by it. Often you've been through weeks, months and years of caretaking with the person.

Yet, when they're gone, you're still at a loss to explain why. Why did God choose to take them, especially during the prime of their life?

What do you do? Do you divert yourself or endure the pain and go on? There are as many ways to survive and endure loss as there are people in the world.

A close relative who recently lost his wife to cancer after a long duration of time is choosing to write about his feelings. It brings solace.

During her illness, he had to keep a stiff upper lip and remain the strong one. I present one of his beautiful writings to you.

May it bring a reader comfort, too.

Painting Our Canvas

By Randy Burnett

As each of us travel through our life, we paint a canvas of each day. Some days are full of vibrant colors, some days the canvas is somewhat colorful, but with darker colors, showing pain and despair. As we travel along this canvas of life, each one of us has a mix of every color in the rainbow splashed across our canvas. Then there are times, in some of our lives, where the only color we dip our brush in is black. Day after day, darkness fills our canvas as we struggle -- grief-stricken -- with the loss of a loved one -- with what to do and where to turn, feeling like there is no other color left for us to use.

But then one day, as we sit at our desk with our canvas and brush and buckets of blackness around us, all of a sudden a hand reaches over and takes the brush from our hand. Suddenly, a few drops of brightness fall on our dark canvas. We look up and see a smile and then they are gone. Day after day this is repeated, until one day this hand takes your hand while you hold the brush. It guides your hand to the sunny yellow bucket of paint and helps you as you put several strokes upon your canvas.

An awakening begins within you. Several days later, this hand and smile appear and are greeted by a smile of yours. A look upon your canvas shows a black border, but only the border -- and within are colors of the rainbow. A glance beside your desk and the paint colors are everywhere, all different colors -- including black -- are represented.

And so we climb from our grief and see beauty again and we realize that the darkness will always be on our canvas, but it will no longer dictate our daily lives. It is a part of who we now are, and we can then become the hand and smile for someone else whose canvas has become dark with grief.

n

Yes, indeed, grief helps to make up who we are. Although sometimes it seems like everything in life is going bad, and they go on and on, eventually the sun always peeks through again. Never fear that life will always be dark.

If you are Christian, you well remember the death and resurrection of Jesus. Things could not have been more cloudy and dark. Yet the sun rose again, and did it ever rise again. The condition of all humanity was changed for the better. So, like Jesus, you, too, will rise from whatever you are facing. You will smile again, be happy again and it will become a part of who you are. You can give thanks for the lessons learned -- hard though they may be. You will gain a new and more understanding heart.