I lost my 29-year old brother David to cancer. He was very healthy. He was a non-smoker. Etc. Etc. And so many people have these stories of people they have lost suddenly, whether it is in car accidents or child birth or cancer. I rarely hear the trauma of losing someone who lived a long healthy life. People come in and grieve the sudden death in a very different way from the loss of a loved one who lived a full life. Missing seems to be a very different emotion from grieving.
How we all move on from a sudden loss amazes me. I’m touched that I can still see beauty in a sunset. For a long time, I couldn’t. And then life started to seep into me.
I remember I was sitting shiva (the Jewish way of mourning) and I said to somebody, I don’t feel like I can do life. And they said, don’t worry about that. Life will come back to you.
And that’s what happened. Life came into me. Perhaps that is how we’re created. Like a plant goes towards the sun, we seek out life.
