Moving into Grief
Someone I love killed himself not long ago. It was a shock to hear. By my standards, he had it all. An adoring and beautiful wife and two beautiful small children, attractiveness, charm, charisma, intelligence, curiosity and serious talent. He was a good and compassionate person and was loved and admired by many. He had integrity and was exceptionally honest. He had “followed his bliss,” as Joseph Campbell put it, and become a successful photographer. And yet, he killed himself.
It was incomprehensible. And it still is. I don’t know why he did this and I don’t want to come up with an answer so that I don’t have to tolerate not knowing. I don’t want to rationalize his death so I don’t have to feel the grief. I am refusing analysis and explanations. It happened. I have had to give up one of my cherished beliefs, namely, that following one’s bliss is a cure for suffering.
After many days I have discovered this: I want to relinquish hope, believing, curing, healing. All these are responses to the assumption that what is now is not good, right, just, worthy.
Instead, I want to say that, to me, life is so immense, such an inconceivably grand cathedral, it justifies more than hope, belief, curing and healing. It justifies that I am present to it as it is and as it is not.
Rather than finding an explanation for my friend’s suicide, I am moving into the reality of it, of his being gone from here. Rather than seeking to discover a hidden purpose, I am moving into the grief and allowing it to be what it is and not what it isn’t. I honor his choice, and by that, I honor him.