Benjamin West - The Pilgrim Mourning His Dead Ass (1800)
"I prefer to believe that it might ultimately contribute to a half-decent cheese sandwich or something."

When exasperated, Charles Shultz' cartoon character Charlie Brown would resort to his signature, "Good Grief" in response. I interpreted his comment as a mildly updated form of the classic, "Danged Nab-it," suitable for readers of all persuasions and ages, but I've more recently come to consider GoodGrief in its more literal sense. Perhaps grief, universally associated with the worst experiences, exists as an unsuspected good. There's often a huge difference between doing well and feeling good about a result, between tasting good and actually being good for you, so it seems not an outlandish stretch to wonder if grief, too, might somehow carry considerable goodness within it. If so, what distinguishes good grief from bad? How might I reap the benefits of GoodGrief and limit the damage from bad?

Grieving's personal business and, to my mind, not really open for public dissection. Some seem to grieve more openly than others. Some just seem to grieve harder. I suspect these differences might be temperament related, but that's just my suspicion supported by absolutely zero objective inquiry. Because grief seems so personal, I consider it fundamentally unfair to critique another's technique. The widow who throws herself on top of her dear departed's coffin as it's lowering into the grave expresses herself more overtly than does the widow who quietly stifles her sniffles though the service, but each grieve as they feel compelled to, perhaps expressing some personal essence and not a preference at all. Grief seems to take away some of the rational mind, the one usually in charge, so strange behaviors quite naturally appear when grieving takes over. I know of no schedule for recovery, either. Some seem to expend their grief over a long weekend while others never successfully shake theirs. GoodGrief might last a week or extend into years, even unto forever. Because of these features, I believe that grief falls within the boundaries of my Most Generation Interpretation Rule. One simply must make their most generous interpretation of whatever they witness without access to what's really going on inside another. This goes for the griever, too, since it seems that grieving often leaves even the griever clueless about what's going on inside them. Criticizing technique, even your own, tends to make GoodGrief into a worse experience.

I consider grief an unwitting homage, far superior to rugged indifference. Grown men cry in its presence. It's first a feeling, and nobody gets to pick and choose those. They visit without invitation or reservation. I've always suspected that they carry secret messages and tickle emotions to gain attention. Who knows what those deeply encoded messages mean? They're perhaps not meant to be translated any farther than into feelings, especially the utterly overwhelming ones. I consider the accompanying tears to be a form of self-absolution, intended to wash away accumulating toxins. They seem to demand acceptance, not denial, and seem blessings in direct proportion to the volume of acceptance they receive. Initial denial, which still remains the first stage of acceptance, seems common and typically serves to simply amplify the eventual blessing. The worst grief seems any long denied.

I'm no expert on this subject, but this might be the whole point of this essay. Nobody gains expertise in the practice of grieving regardless of prior experience. It's new each time. Many dabble in the theory of it, but the actual experience seems to sit securely beyond cogent description. It sometimes seems much more a persistent absence than a presence, a visitor best recognized by the gift it neglects to bring. Like anything, it cannot resolve itself. It comes as it comes and leaves, if it ever does, on its own damned schedule. There is no pill to take for it. It might most demand tolerance, even above acceptance, since acceptance might imply a level of consent. Nobody welcomes even GoodGrief visiting and all seem to long for it departing. As we age and gain more experience, we might find a certain acquiescence comforting, an acknowledgement that while we might feel shot full of holes remaining from innumerable departures, we're still somehow kicking. My friend BJ Gallagher described feeling like a Swiss cheese, shot full of loss-shaped holes, an ever finer lattice absent once more considerable substance. We each carry holes shaped like those we've lost and, as we age, I expect that we eventually increasingly almost turn more ghostly, emitting the pungent scent of an aging Emmentaler.

I might have utterly failed to make my point, so I'll attempt to enumerate as I exit. Grief might be a blessing. It demands acceptance, even if and perhaps especially if it first encounters denial and resistance. It's damned persistent. It might never leave. Grieving seems an unwitting homage. Buddhists might actively practice non-attachment but the rest of us whole-heartedly attach ourselves to the people we love, which opens us up to considerable suffering when (not if) they leave us. That suffering seems destined to become either bad or GoodGrief. If it's never leaving, we might be wise to find some way to consider even the most wrenching experience to be evidence of GoodGrief. It certainly doesn't all feel good, but I prefer to believe that it might ultimately contribute to a half-decent cheese sandwich or something.

©2021 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #SettlingInto, #PureSchmaltz