A few days a week I write on my page to encourage people as they journey through their day to day. I always start by paying gratitude to the God Almighty who will have allowed me to see the new day and gave me His grace to start afresh. The thing I don’t talk much about is grief. We don’t talk about it a lot even when we are nursing a loved one at the end of life. Grief is one place where the experience of pain is understood by the person who is standing in the mud, it becomes difficult to lift your legs when the wet clay is holding onto your legs.

It is not only in war where we remember the lost. There are days, we speak about our friends who have since passed and we reminisce on the old days and we miss them. The pain is refreshed every time we talk about them. A few weeks ago, when we spoke to another friend enquiring of people, we knew again O got a response which I had never thought of they told me that the person I had asked after "they was". When I asked what that meant I learnt that it means that “they passed on”. It is days like that when I remember those who have left my family and the pain comes back again. There is no person who will get used to loss, it is like that wound which keeps getting reignited and the pain starts again.

I say we should remember the lost because as we have moved them into our memories, some left us gifts which we have to cherish. We see their smile in their children, we hear their laughter in them and we also silently lament for their missing the development of their children. When we remember the four absences in my family, I am reminded of that last call which broke my family again, my baby brother was no more life taken away in the most gruesome murder. I feel the pain in my parents’ hearts as they watch their flock dwindling under their eyes. How do you comfort parents who are losing their cubs one by one?

That is why I am intentional with gratitude because I may not wake up and it is by grace that I get to see another day. I am so much reminded not to take another day for granted. We have a gift of the extra day to start again not only for ourselves but, for many who are looking up to our hands. Dear people we go out each day we have been allowed the gift of breath and do our best in service. Pain can endure in the night but joy comes in the morning when we make someone smile or cope better with their load. We are placed in positions of purpose to stretch out our hands and pull up those who have are covered by the blanket of darkness. There are people who are waiting on house lend a helping hand. We are also created and fashioned for interaction, fellowship and connection. Let us do that this is how we give love to the broken hearted and foster meaningful relationships.