Meghan O'Rourke
Meghan O'RourkeGrief is characterized much more by waves of feeling that lessen and reoccur, it's less like stages and more like different states of feeling.
Grief is like having an inner saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes.
Grief is a feeling which a piece of you recognizes as an extreme state, an altered state, yet a large part of you is entirely subject to its demands.
Grief involves wanting to be reminded that the sadness one feels is not just one's own but 'ours'.
Grief is still lonelier because even the most well-intentioned people are unsure of what to say.
The Love story is always a tale of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.
Mourning is to wonder at the strangeness that grief is not written all over your face in bruised hieroglyphics. And it's also to feel, quite powerfully, that you're not allowed to descend into the deepest fathom of your grief that to do so would be taboo somehow.
