Grief

A Perspective

Grief is a difficult emotion. It never really passes.

The worst thing anyone can say to someone grieving is something like “It will get better, give it time.”. Just letting time pass does nothing. Ethel Kennedy had it right: grow your life, make your life bigger so that in retrospect that grief is proportionately smaller.

Robert Kennedy (aka RFK Jr): “My mother was accustomed to grief, and she had figured out how to process it in a way that was really dignified and admirable. I asked her if the hole that people leave in us when they die ever gets any smaller. My mother told me that it never gets any smaller, but our job is to grow ourselves bigger around that hole, and the way we do that is by incorporating the best virtues of those people that we lost into our own character, and in making that effort, we build ourselves—we build our character, and we give those people a kind of immortality, because we’re thinking every day about how to improve ourselves by incorporating the lessons of their lives and the virtues they displayed when they were with us, and at the same time, we grow ourselves into bigger people. And when we do that, that hole gets proportionately smaller.”

This struck me as profoundly brilliant. Since my wife passed away fourteen years ago, I’ve done a lot of thinking about how to (mentally / emotionally) handle this loss. The grief has never left, but I’ve thrown myself into life. Terrible moments continue to hit, but most of my life now is wonderful.

Cathy is immortal, in a sense, in that she has made me a better person and I’m trying to use that love to make the world a better place.