A Mother, After All, Is Your Entry

Loss Doesn't Feel Redeemable. But For Me One Consoling Aspect Is The Recognition That, In This At Least, None Of Us Is Different From Anyone Else: We All Lose Loved Ones; We All Face Our Own Death.

One Of The Grubby Truths About A Loss Is That You Don't Just Mourn The Dead Person, You Mourn The Person You Got To Be When The Lost One Was Alive. This Loss Might Even Be What Affects You The Most.

I Wasn't Prepared For The Fact That Grief Is So Unpredictable. It Wasn't Just Sadness, And It Wasn't Linear. Somehow I'd Thought That The First Days Would Be The Worst And Then It Would Get Steadily Better - Like Getting Over The Flu. That's Not How It Was.

I Have Seen That Grief Can Be Very Different For Different People. While The Range Of Emotions Experienced Is Similar, The Way We Deal With Those Emotions Isn't, Necessarily.

I Think That Grief Is A Profound Spiritual, Metaphysical, And - Oddly - Physical Reckoning With Death, Which We Don't Understand Well. It's Both The Process By Which You Relearn The World In The Absence Of Someone Who Was A Pillar In It, And The Process In Which You Confront The Reality Of Death.