Notes on Grief
The Uses Of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
— Mary Oliver
There are few feelings I want to escape more than grief. Maybe shame. Maybe anger. But grief most of all. I hate the way it sinks its roots into me and rests there, a sharp, acrid pain in my heart. I can’t run from it, I can’t bury it. I can only wait it out. I sometimes think I’d do a lot to avoid that feeling. But at the same time, I am viscerally certain that, given the choice between feeling grief and shutting myself off from it, I will tack into the storm as if my life depends on it.
Maybe it does.
As Steven Petrow puts it in his New York Times article on sorrow: “loss and grief are the flip side of love.” Love, by nature, comes hand in hand with her twin, Grief. To shut the door on one is to shut the door on the other. To invest your heart in anything you can lose is to let yourself be hurt and healed, hurt and healed. Whether it’s a deliberate choice or not, when you choose to avoid risking your heart because you’re afraid of being hurt, you’re making a philosophical decision that preventing loss is more important than achieving love. Maybe that’s your prioritization set; if you’re going to own that, by all means, own it. But if not — reconsider.
In Japan, Kintsugi is the art of mending broken pottery with gold. It’s also a philosophy that something becomes more beautiful as a result of its history — the process of breakage and repair is to be appreciated rather than hidden.
Nothing in life is constant, and nothing in love is without risk. But the interesting thing about emotional discomfort is that it’s often, paradoxically, a sign that you’re doing something right. For a loss to break you open means you’ve risked enough to let something matter that is outside of your control. Grief is, in its own right, a badge of emotional courage. It means you were willing to break for the sake of hope. It means you chose the possibility of love over the threat — and even the reality — of pain. And that’s a choice I hope I make again and again.
All things end, either by death, choice, or change. I’d rather accept that I may break as a result of love, and learn to mend, than to starve love’s beginning because I’m afraid of its end.