Grief

Grief is a terrible word in the English language. We associate it with so many negatives. We most often think of loved ones who have passed on and the feelings that we get as we realize that we won’t be able to spend time with them again. True grief can be the worst feeling in the world. It cuts worse than any knife and wreaks havoc on our minds worse than any social disease ever could. Still, I think grief is good. That might sound strange, but I think grief is a sign of everything that is good in this world. Let me spend a couple of minutes telling you why.

   The more you grieve and hurt, the more you usually cared about the person who has passed on. Maybe they were a family member or maybe just a close friend, but one fact remains. When true grief takes over, you see the world through a whole new lens. You see all the ugliness in it and all the heartbreak. For a moment, you don’t even know if you want to hold on. Maybe it would be better if you weren’t in this world. After all, in those moments, it seems like there’s nothing left for you but pain. It is those moments that show us what we have to lose, though. Here’s a fact about grief. You would never feel it if you had not opened yourself to a person and allowed them to mean more to you than you probably ever knew they could. Maybe you’ve lost your mother or father, or maybe it’s even more serious. Maybe you’ve lost a husband or wife or even a child. There’s no doubt when they leave your life that the world will always be a little colder for you, but I look at grief so much differently than others. It is painful, but it is what life is all about. Life is full of two things - love and pain. Even if we don’t always see it, you can’t have one without the other. No matter how much two people love each other, one day they will have to lose each other, whether that is through death or just separation for some reason. This creates pain born from love that will never quite fade but never be the same either. In my opinion, it is that pain that lets us know we have lived life with at least one individual in the way that God intended it to be lived. We loved and were loved. Over time, our lives became so intertwined with another person’s that we could barely tell the differences between our two worlds. They were a part of our world and even the deepest parts of our soul, and when they’re gone, a part of us dies with them. We become colder as we lay them to rest, and there’s one less person in this world for us to live for. Still, it’s such a testament to how we live our lives and how they did. Our grief shows everything we accomplished together. As humans, we’re made selfish. It’s not in our nature to care about much more than ourselves, but in our grief, we find that we cared so much for someone that a part of us is laid to rest with them. Can there be anything more beautiful than that? Can we honestly say that grief is bad when it is proof that there is love, and even in loss, there is remembrance for those who forever altered our lives and souls?

   You might wonder why I’m writing this. I’ve lost someone recently, and I’ve seen the toll it has taken on those I love. I don’t believe in naming names on blogs or online in general, so I won’t say who’s hurting or even who has passed on to a better place, but I will say this. My loved one changed my life for the better, and I know that as I see the grief in many of my family members’ eyes that he changed everything about who they were down to their core. Part of them has been laid to rest with him, but another part lives on in them and in their children. That grief in their eyes is a testament to everything that once was and still is in our hearts, minds, and spirits. We should really redefine how we think of grief. It should be celebrated because when you grieve, it shows that you got to know someone who altered your life in an extraordinary way. There’s no better achievement in life than to know that you made a lasting impact on those you loved. The person you’re missing did that, and that’s something truly worth celebrating.