Once, during a time of acute grief, I asked a friend how he was doing. His answer stuck with me, “I feel like I’m just taking up space today.” Is there a better definition of purposelessness than that?
Okay, but we are moving on, because it’s what we tell ourselves we must do, move on. Pick yourself up. Get on down the road. New episodes of grief await. Wouldn’t want to miss them! Doesn’t mean we forget, we tell ourselves, no, we dasn’t do that.
And then there are The Perspectivists, “Sure, you’ve suffered a loss, you’re grieving, but human beings all over the world suffer loss every day, many worse than yours, so keep that in mind.”
Oh, right, of course, how could I be so out-of-mind foolish, grief is relative! Grief must be properly assigned to the Great Distribution of all Human Grief. Only then may we see how insignificant our grief really is, “See there, they say, be glad your grief isn’t out in the tail, now that would be significant grief.”
Don’t let it bring you down,
It’s only castles burning
Find someone who’s turning
And you will come around
– Neil Young, After the Gold Rush, 1970
Now, if you don’t mind, Lucy and I are going to take up space somewhere else for a while.
Until we come around.