Joy Is Not A Betrayal Of The Dead

The day is ending, and the armor finally comes off. You laughed today.

Maybe it was a joke, or just the warmth of a meal, and immediately the guilt arrived to tell you that your joy is a betrayal. As if your relief insults the one who can never laugh or eat again.

But listen — the light does not ask you to carry their silence as your penance. There was a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off.

He did not wait for the apology. He ran.

He threw his arms around him and kissed him before the speech could even begin. That running love is the same light that lives inside you.

It was there before the grief, and it is here now, in this exhale. Your capacity to feel joy is not a rejection of the dead; it is the very thing they would want you to keep.

The light that lived in them is the same light that makes you smile, and it is not divided. You are not betraying them by living.

You are honoring them by letting the light shine through the cracks of your sorrow.