JUNE 20
I am glad [the book] came to be written. It has in some
strange way refined some dross out of me. It has taught
me—though this was not my first lesson—to accept the joys
and vicissitudes of life, and to fall in love again with its
strangeness and beauty and terror.
—ALAN PATONNot many of us will, like Alan Paton, write a book to help
us work our way through loss. But many have found it
helpful to keep a journal—a simple notebook in which to
write our thoughts and questions, express our pain, so we
don’t have to carry it around in our heads all the time.
We may want to look back over the journal from time to
time—to remind ourselves of the emotional ups and downs
of our journey, or to refresh our minds about a sequence of
events. If we never look at the pages again, they will still
have served us well. Just finding words for the tumult helps
us understand it a little better, move through it with less
danger of getting stuck, so we can reach the place where we
can “fall in love again” with life.
Of course, not everyone likes to write—painting does it
for some, or playing the piano—anything to open our emo-
tional pores and let the energy of grief flow out, free us for
new life.
Grief is like a refiner’s fire. It will leave me with something beau-
tiful.