My friend C. just lost her sister, Kay. The death was shocking and unexpected, even though Kay had been recently diagnosed with recurrent metastatic cancer. She was a strong woman.  She’d worked right through chemo and radiation the first time the cancer occurred. The day before she died, following her first round of treatment, she graded papers, did school work, had a good day. And then she left. But she hung on for a while, lingering on life support as her family gathered, conferred with doctors, went through the awful work of trying to figure out the next step. 

C. says the three days of waiting for Kay to die were impossibly hard, and luminous. Her job, she knew, wasn’t to solve problems or help: it was just to be there, every day, in the hospital room, witnessing and loving and praying. Just to be there. She was holding something up - holding the holiness of that wondrous and wrenching transition as Kay hung between two worlds. Despite all her own pain, and despite trying to support Kay’s immediate family as they went through the shocking situation, C. knew she was right where she was supposed to be. And that she was being transformed. 

At a recent retreat, our friend S. talked about her father’s death. How she sat with him, held his hand, sang to him, forgave him, made him laugh, loved him in his last weeks. She never left his side, even though their relationship had been challenging for most of her life. He had been rude, hurtful, cold toward her during her whole childhood. It was only in the last few years that he had softened some, and come to see and appreciate her life and gifts and choices. But there was no question about caring for him when he was ill. She was right there, and there was no place else she would have been. 

The older I get, the more I know that love is all. Everything. I know this not just in my mind, in my heart, but in my whole body; in my whole being. 

Maybe grief is just love without some place to go. Grief is love that can bear all the pain and imperfections and beauty and possibility at once. 

I know that as hard as my aunt’s passing was for me, it has changed my life. I can bear the loss, the emptiness, the ambiguity, the conflicts, the confounding truth of being here now and also knowing that someday I won’t. I can live with peoples’ differing opinions. I can live with the unknown. I can live with a suffering and struggling world, and still see so much beauty and loveliness even in the darkness and uncertainty. My heart can bear more than I thought was possible. Grief has been an unexpected gift. 

Ora Nadrich, of The Institute for Transformational Thinking, says about grief: “We have a wonderful opportunity to learn from death, and realize that it can help transform us to be better and wiser people because of it. And we must believe that our deceased loved ones would not only want us to heal our hearts from their passing, but also rise from our suffering like a phoenix rises from the ashes, and soar higher than we ever have before.”

The uninvited transformations brought by loss have re-made me into a “better self,” someone I wouldn’t have known how to be without the fire of grief forging me into something new. For that, I am eternally grateful.