It has been 5 months since Lou crossed the rainbow bridge, and yesterday, I found myself uttering these unfairly hurtful words as I was cuddling Bee close to my chest:

“Bee, you don’t be a bad doggie like Lou, okay? You stay with Mama forever.”

I don’t know what stage of the grief journey I’m at, but I’m pretty sure it’s not Acceptance.

What I’ve learned is that I grieve like I’ve observed my Vietnamese ancestors grieve: by blaming the deceased for abandoning us.  

In our culture, we believe that when a soul decides it’s time to transition to their next re-incarnation, nothing will stop them. Likewise, when a soul decides it’s not time to let go, then no Earthly adversaries will succeed in ending their mission in this lifetime and this timeline.

It is our core belief in the agency of the individual soul that has helped us in stoically accepting their free will to embrace their next adventure. But on the other side of that double-edged sword, we harbor resentment against our past loved ones for that same decision.

It was this stoic acceptance that comforted my parents through the passing of their two infant children. It was this resentment that manifested its ugly form through my grandmother’s hysterical tears as she clutched tightly onto her mother’s coffin, screaming “Why did you leave me?”

As for me, I’m trying to find the balance as I navigate the grief journey with this double-edged sword. Because in this muddy water, it’s difficult to decipher which “hurt” is more tolerable:

…the acceptance that our loved one’s souls are not ours to control, or the cutting realization that they have absolute agency over their time with us on this realm, but they decided to leave us anyway.