DECEMBER 7
What’s gone and what’s past help
Should be past grief.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEAREAh, but it isn’t! That’s part of what the grief is all about—that
there’s no changing what’s happened, no help available for
restoring what’s gone.
Shakespeare’s character Paulina, from The Winter’s Tale,
admonishes with a message no more palatable to her
listener than a modern counterpart would be to us: “Cheer
up. It’s over. You can’t do anything to change it. Just accept
it and go ahead with your life.”
It’s bad enough if we hear this kind of advice from well-
meaning friends. It’s worse yet if we regale ourselves with
such exhortations and feel guilty if we can’t act on them.
Of course we don’t want to mope around, grieving
forever. But the surest way to avoid that is not to put caps
on the wells of our grief and try to walk away, but to deal
with grief honestly, experiencing its pain and anger for as
long as we need to. Then and only then will we be able to
incorporate the meaning of our loss into our lives, and move
ahead.
Assimilating this loss into my life is a long process, and I will give
it its due.