NOVEMBER 22
You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs. Still I am king of those.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEAREGrief is a private matter, as well as a public one, affecting
as it does all our relationships with friends, family, and our
world.
But it is in our solitude that we are most affected by our
loss. It is there, in our interplay with memory and our de-
cisions about our energy and time, that we hold in our hands
some control over the course of our grief.
It is a responsibility that sometimes we would as soon not
have. It is easy to fall into ruts—even ruts of grieving. We
get used to living in this mood, and it may be more comfort-
able to stay with it than to make the effort to move away
from grief as the center of our lives. We may even feel pos-
sessive of our grief—as though any attempt, by us or by
well-meaning friends, might reduce the importance of our
loss, or even of our loved one.
We are the best judges of when to stay in our grief and
when to move on to something else. The important thing is
to inwardly accept responsibility for the choices we make.
And to recognize the difference between grieving over the
loss of a loved one and continuing to cherish that person.
Sometimes the best choice is to be in my grief, sometimes not.