As I was getting ready for my interview with Linda Schreyer from Writers Talks at Studio West in Los
Angeles (http://t.co/9OWGGScNds), Linda
said she liked the line that appeared at the end of my blog post, “The First
Death.” (That line is the title of this post.) She thought grief did all three.
I agreed, although we both knew some people that had gotten stuck in the first arena.
Grief Breaks Us
Besides the brutal impact of
death, grief also breaks something important in us. Perhaps we thought that
life was supposed to be a happy place, but now all we see is chaos,
destruction and pain. Or maybe it’s an illusion about life that we’ve always
believed, like, if we lead good lives and help others, then we will die
peacefully in old age. Perhaps our new view of reality is so stark that it
makes us wonder if there is enough left.
