Some Thoughts on Grief

To live is to suffer loss. There is no way of getting around it: In this earthly, mortal life, there will come a time – sooner or later, or both sooner and later – when a person loses something and someone dear to him or her. It is the emotional cost of love and, oftentimes, it hurts beyond all words. It is, unfortunately, “bound up” with being human.

 

Perhaps the only way to avoid the “pain” that comes with loss is to avoid love altogether. But, I ask: ‘Is that really living a fully human life?’ I think not! Rather, it is existing on the level of a rock or clod of dirt, which feels no pain. As the “old” song by Nazareth puts it: “Love hurts!” But the pain of love is worth it! As Alfred Lord Tennyson writes, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” There is a great deal of joy and meaning to life in having loved someone. But the alternative to that is one of the greatest sources of pain, the pain of a self-enclosed, isolated, non-attached, lonely, loveless existence.