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Grief is stealthy. It doesn’t usually attack head on. It prefers to sneak up on me when my guard is down.

It very effectively did that yesterday, one day short of a year from my sister’s diagnosis of stage 2 ovarian cancer. But the realization of that isn’t what caught me off guard.

My brother wrote that he’d been in contact with a friend of my sister. The friend wrote that the last time he spoke with Helen, a couple of weeks before she died, she had asked for 2 of her own recipes which she had misplaced. He attached the recipes in the email.

The email didn’t hit bother me even though I immediately remembered overhearing that phone call.

That memory didn’t bother me.

I opened the attachment and there it was; the sucker punch, grieve’s modus operandi. The recipes were written in my sister’s handwriting. I wasn’t expecting her actual handwriting, which like a thumbprint, is unique to all of us.

My feelings started with just a gasp, but rose quickly from the void recently created by her death.

A gasp, a sigh, a groan, then deep silent sobs, and finally audible sobs, which summoned my husband to my side with a ready embrace.

Grief is never finished with its ambush of me until it reminds me it will compound my loss again someday when I lose another loved one. Grief reminds me how fragile my loved-ones’ lives are. How fast and fleeting is mine.

But grief, where is your victory? By reminding me of the fleetingness of life you remind me to treasure each moment, to store up memories in my heart, which you can not destroy.

Grief retreated. I know it will sabotage me again. But it can not win the day. I have a Savior Who has overcome death.

“O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?”

1 Corinthians 15:55 ASV

https://bible.com/bible/12/1co.15.55.ASV