Thoughts on Grief

 As I read through books like Lewis' "A Grief Observed" and Sandberg's "Option B" and Broadbent's "We Need to Talk About Grief", I am struck by the fact that, in one sense I am trying to write about something deep and intense which I have never really experienced myself. 

Have I known grief? Yes. Yes, I have. The grief of losing beloved pets, grandparents, parents, and friends...some very traumatically. So grief as an emotion is not totally unknown to me.

Then there was the grief of leaving and entering the lives of those we have known. Moving from one home to another, or from one country to another was certainly a grieving process. When our sons left home to attend college...that was grief in a sense. When they got married...left us to cleave to their beloved spouse...that was grief in another sense. A detachment of sorts that was very painful at the time.

But the grief I am attempting to describe...to address in this book about the father of the prodigals...I've never experienced anything like that. His wife's death during the birth of the younger son...I have no idea what that is like and, to be perfectly honest, I am thankful I have never had to deal with that kind of devastation. But to have that very same son betray him...leave him without saying goodbye...stay gone without so much as a letter...that is totally beyond my comprehension.

So, I am stealing the grief of others to write these journal entries?

Am I a hypocrite?

Or am I taking the experience of others and collecting them in some form of memorial to them and their bravery? 

Some of the stories I read almost unravels me completely...how do people survive? How to they breath much less rise every morning to face the agony and lonely emptiness?

But I write on...perhaps at the end of it all, I will understand what is not understandable...