Holding on

There are those who, with good intentions, attempt to help those of us who grieve by removing from our lives reminders of what is gone. That is not what we want. These memories--these crumbs --are not something we wish to be done with. We want to remember.

One of the things I have learned about sorrow is that often we grieve most keenly for the loss of what we really never had but only anticipated. We are sustained in life so greatly by our hopes for the future, by projected scenarios involving ourselves and our loved ones, and when these fail to be realized we feel we have been deprived of what seems already rightfully ours.

As a youth and as a young adult, I had seen my grandfathers and then my grandmothers pass away. I cared for them, and would miss them, but they had fulfilled their years. The young especially do not grieve for long when death comes in timely fashion and releases the old from their burdens. But premature death is something else. When a loved one is erased even as he stands on the threshold of maturity, the event lacks the naturalness that could reconcile us to it.

I find it hard to express myself sometimes so this was taken from H. Wayne Schow, he too lost his beloved son.