FEBRUARY 24
People bring us well-meant but miserable consolations when
they tell us what time will do to help our grief. We do not
want to lose our grief, because our grief is bound up with
our love and we could not cease to mourn without being
robbed of our affections
—PHILLIPS BROOKSOf course time eases our grief, provided we let it follow its
course and give it its due. Few of us would want the intens-
ity and desolation of early grief to stay with us forever.
That’s not what we’re afraid of.
But we may be afraid that we’ll lose the intensity of love
we felt for the one we have lost.
At first these two—the grief and the love—are so wedded
to each other that we cannot separate them. We may cling
to the grief in desperation so we will be sure not to lose the
love.
Perhaps the grief and the love will always be wedded to
each other to some degree, like two sides of a coin. But
maybe after a while, when we flip the coin, it will almost
always be the love that turns up on top.
My loved one is as much a part of my life as the air and food and
water that nourish my body. Therefore I shall not fear losing
someone who has been, and is, a part of me.