The Grief I Can Touch

The sadness, desolation, emptiness seeps from my eyes, ears, mouth, but with no sound, no tears, just an invisible fog.

What I can touch:  my nephews' and nieces' being orphans; my brother and sister-in-law's loneliness; my mother's desperate grief; my father's silent pain; my younger brother and sister's sense of loss and disorientation.

All of that grief seems real, palpable.

Mine, on the contrary, seems exaggerated, false in some sense...empty.

I lack the belief that I have the right to grieve.

The silent tears gather in my eyes for all the pain that I sense others are suffering, and my pain waits for the *appropriate* time, place, etc.