Finding Meaning, or not

Broken Heart with single teardrop

If you have loved and you know loss, then you are beautiful to me. No action required.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Some losses are too great, too cruel, unimaginable, and senseless. When someone awkwardly offers, "there is a reason for everything" maybe you feel like saying "fuck off". Because maybe there isn't a reason for everything. Sometimes things happen and they are the worst, and there is no way to make them okay.

David Kessler has written about the "sixth stage of grief" - finding meaning. I am glad for him that he could find meaning after an unimaginable loss. That must be a tremendous relief. But finding meaning requires work. It asks something of grieving person, something that isn't required in the five stages that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described. Those five stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) are responses, not assignments. They unfold in their own messy, non-linear way.

Maybe its possible to find meaning in a death. Maybe it is not. The last thing a grieving person needs is another expectation of productivity, another demand to turn pain into something useful. Sometimes the only thing that comes is the honor of wearing the badge of grief - proof that we have lived, loved, suffered and survived.

And that is enough.