Good grief! And no, I’m not referring to a Peanuts character. Good grief is a concept that Americans are too unfamiliar with. Instead, we are more familiar with phrases like, “change is hard” or “time goes too fast”. It’s hard sometimes to break out of these constructs.
Here’s the thing though…we are more like a river than a standing body of water. We do not stay in the same place. Instead we move continually, change continually, grow and age continually. All of these natural changes entail some loss, yet they also entail something new to come. Nothing ever really “goes back” and nothing ever really “stays the same”.
I have two beautiful children. My son is 17 and my daughter is 6. I can close my eyes and imagine my daughter as a newborn and my then 11 year son holding his new little sister, who he called “our baby”. This thought can bring tears to my eyes. Tears of joy, tears of love, and yes tears of longing for a time gone by. And this my friends is what I call a “good grief.”
Good grief is a part of the greatness of life. Things keep moving like a river. While we can always go and find that river in the same place, the river itself is ever changing. This is how we work too. Our memories of the times we love the most are always there for us, whenever we want to access them. Yet every time we access these memories, the life we are presently living somehow changes what we see in those memories. Sometimes it is because we are sad that these memories represent that those times are never going to happen again. We long for the days when we were living in those memories. We want so badly to be able to be there again, just one more time.
On the other side of that, we can also feel the wonders of good grieving when the memories we have make us feel hopeful for the wonders yet to come. This happens to me sometimes when I am looking at my son these days. He is living a part of his life that is still a part of my life that I remember quite vividly. I remember 17. I remember it well. Some of my very best friends now, were my very best friends then. Some the lessons I was just embarking on then, are the kinds of lessons that I am using 20 times a day now. So I look at my son and I think, “Oh I can’t wait for him to experience these friendships as lifelong ones” or “Oh baby…I want so much for you to know that this is just a bump in your road…you’ll see that some day.”
Grief is not something to be avoided, yet rather something to expect and cherish as part of life. Good grief especially. It helps us to put life in perspective. To get into the part of us that can stand back and observe our lives as a whole and see that even the hard times and challenging lessons are times that are good FOR us and TO us. Grief is a space for us to recognize the beauty of what was, what is, and what will be.
What’s your good grief? I would love to hear about it in the comments.