The Importance of Grief

 Yesterday, as I was out walking my dog I realized something very important.   My father (who passed on in 2009) was on my mind. 

That fact that I was thinking of him wasn't at all unusual - it was the fact that I realized I was thinking of him.   

And that's when it occurred to me that grief - with all its darkness and despair - is maybe one of the most important souvenirs we can take with us from this journey.  Allow me to explain why I feel this way. 

Before my father's death, I was headstrong youngling - making my way in the world without any consideration whatsoever of the universe or my place in it. I wanted what all young western kids want:  to build an exciting life where I have all the imaginable luxuries that anyone could ever want without any of the sacrifice or headaches that seem to come along with normal everyday living.   A fantasy, of course, but one that a great many young adults from my country seem to buy into, either consciously or unconsciously.  

Then, when he got sick, I did what everyone else does: I worked to get him well.   There was no thought whatsoever that he might be ending, or that there was anything like an ending even in sight.   So when his cancer returned, and he elected not to pursue a second round of treatment, it seemed unfathomable to me. I couldn't even understand it.  But still, it didn't occur to me that he was dying. He was invincible after all; my father was a man who couldn't die. He would live forever. 

That didn't happen, of course. He passed on in early December of 2009, and I was left reeling from what I then considered not only a loss, but something more profound: the realization that nothing was permanent, and that everything I'd hoped to build in my life was nothing more than a fleeting distraction. I mourned not just my dad - but the ideals that left with him:  the ideals that embodied a life of hard work, of "making it," of acheiving something.   Those concepts were bound up in my identity of him, and when he passed, those ideas of mine sure took a blow.  

Grief wears many robes. 

Grief was an off-shore earthquake whose tsunamis flooded me again and again and again, for several years after that.  I have spoken a little of here.  

Grief, though, wears many robes.  And while initially it cuts at us with its sharp edges, much like a blade, over time it becomes less about sadness and more about the memories - more about revisiting the moments along our timeliness wherein we can sit with those who are gone once more, and hear their laughter, and cherish their ideals, and hold them close to us.  Grief's maturity brings with it a realization that impermanence is bound up in every living thing - a realization that speaks to the cosmic nature of all parts of life, from our sorrow to our joy, our surprise to our jealousy, and beyond.   

For my own journey, grief transformed itself in me. It became in me a curiosity that would not be sedated with platitudes of heaven or hell, or eternal rewards, or any other meaning assigned to our hereafter by religious doctrines.    My grief lit in me a fire that has not seemed to be extinguishable, and has set me on a chase instead to understand the universe where I live, and its ebbs and flows, and to understand how I operate inside it, and what comes next for me when I exit its tides.  

But it will not always be the bitter-tasting water you must drink. It changes over time.

I cannot overstate the importance of grief, then.  For those of you who are grieving right now: please know that this deep, cutting pain will not last forever, even though it seems like it will.  Your grief will lead you somewhere, and it won't always be to the well of sadness. You won't always have to drink from those bitter waters. Someday it will lead you to a path made for you: one where the memories you carry will serve as milestones instead of pain points, and you will not cringe to rehearse and relive each one of them. You will embrace them, and understand that timelines govern only our days and nights, but not our hearts and souls, and you'll find your place on a path that leads you to water you want to drink intsead. 

My heart is with all of you.