Good Grief!

It’s so difficult to comfort anyone who is grieving because the feeling of loss is inconsolable.  Loss itself is a complex thing to define, mostly because it is wrapped up in our idea of control, believing we own or have power over things and people and believing they are ours and cannot be taken from us; yet, we also, continually fear loss of people or things, afraid they will be taken from us.

When we lose someone close to us, either to death or other circumstances, which may as well be death, if we’re no longer close, as current studies have shown, when we’ve lost touch with a loved one to death, we feel the same type of pain and grieve the same way as we do when losing touch with a loved one whom is still living, regardless of the type of relationship, whether a once close friend, a spouse, through divorce or a breakup with a lover.  In each instance, the bottom line is extreme disappointment stemming from something beyond our control.  We can debate the circumstances of an event and whether we could have prevented it; if it resulted in someone’s death, yet, it still evented; it happened and, to our surprise or not.  We must live without; the loss felt, making hearts heavy with the strain in grieving, wrestling with abandonment, desertion, emptiness and how to cope with this part of the human condition which is faced with knowing, at any time, anything can slip through our hands because nothing is in our hands.