Life and Death

“Bereavement is an universal and integral part of our experience of love.” - C. S. Lewis

Where there is life there is death.

The opposite is also true, where there is death there is also life. It may not be the life we wanted, or expected, or welcome, but life continues, and in many ways is re-birthed after the death of someone we love.

Love is what makes it so hard to live well after the death of our person. Because love doesn’t die. In many ways love intensifies in their absence.

Life goes on undisturbed to everyone else, and this can make our grief experience feel excruciatingly lonely. All this love and nowhere to put it. All this life and no desire to share it.

To grieve is to be alone. Even amongst people who are grieving the death of the same person, each experience is unique because their relationship with the deceased was also unique. And sharing life becomes very hard and complicated when we are grieving.

As much as we may try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we can’t really understand the pain they feel, neither can they understand our pain. What we can do, however, is to find ways to embrace our own grief and to make space for the grief of others. We can also find people who get it because they’ve experienced what it’s like to lose someone they love.

Every human being will someday either lose someone they love, or someone they love will lose them. Death is part of life.

And after the death, there is always an invitation to find a way to make life part of death. A new life, with new challenges and new possibilities, but which will always be connected to our grief.

Because grieving is part of loving, and loving is part of losing, and losing is part of life.