Stevie Szabad, Author

“I get knocked down, I get back up again, You’re never gonna keep me down…”, Chumbawumba…

We’ve all lost people we love (or will, especially at our age 😉). I won’t mention the pandemic this time, who needs to? Each daily statistic represents someone’s personal grief. People are people, we live, we love, we die. Sometimes too soon, whatever that means – my grandmother died in her mid-nineties and it felt too soon. But you know what I mean.

To feel grief, that hollow, howling emptiness; nothing else more fully defines humanity to me than grief. The physical punch of it. The ache and throb of it. The rage, the helpless acceptance.

Acceptance of grief? It seems impossible that we must suffer such a feeling, but that is a secret power of grief – that it never goes away, and we learn to live with it. We must, what choice is there?

The power of grief? I prefer to think of it as the gift of grief. We must endure it, so it steels us, empowering us. How bad can regular annoyances of life seem if we can endure the death of a loved one? It’s a lifetime gift – we become consolers ourselves to others as they learn to accept their own gifts of grief. The sharing of the human experience ties us together despite other superficial differences we may have. Grief knows no nationality, no one has a monopoly on it. This gift of insight, slight but bright, into the human condition, is one to carry into other facets of life. We accept and we carry on. We learn to laugh and enjoy again. But we always suffer the grief; it will ebb and flow throughout our lives forevermore. So back to my own grief. I won’t list the people I’ve loved and lost – those close to me know – but I want to thank those who’ve gone before me for their gifts, given by grief. Thank you – I’ll never forget you.