! A Grief Ago

'There is no grief which time does not lessen or soften' - so said Cicero, a man so often right; a Stoic, those for whom all life presents a lesson to be learned from, and then, to move on from.. But I wonder about all this: is grief ever lessened or softened? Is it not, perhaps, overlaid in our so various ways? For some, grief framed and falsified to ease that grief; For some, like hyacinths and crocus bulbs, left in a dark cupboard in the autumn of our grief to respond to time, and become at last themselves? gently, gently, the covers pulled over the loving bed, the true, the pure, the lovely painful grief, the memory deep cherished, gently, gently, folded into the cupboards of the heart there to be known, without the door disturbed until the time - 'a grief ago' as Dylan wrote - the cupboard opened only for love's sake without grief...: those carefully folded memories brought out and loved and lived a while... not grief, not grief...but the pure memory of grief and behold, life.