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As the writer C. S. Lewis once remarked in his memoir of his own bereavement, “It was when I grieved [my wife] least that I remembered her best.”
That is, allowing ourselves to once again embrace life in its full emotional range can carry the surprising dividend of gaining fuller access to the happy memories of times with our loved one, the special moments, the humor, the pride, the shared joy–all of which can be obscured or muted by the shroud of grief.
"... it makes sense to recreate a life that is
charged with both purpose and pleasure,
as well as tinged with grief, rather than
recruiting them merely as witnesses to
our unending despair."
In many ways we might understand the fuller process of grieving as finding not a way of letting go of our loved one, but of discovering how to hold on in a new and sustainable way to all that they meant and continue to mean to us … and that includes inviting them into our ongoing lives, as well as joining them in the past in the form of memories. If we do this, it makes sense to recreate a life that is charged with both purpose and pleasure, as well as tinged with grief, rather than recruiting them merely as witnesses to our unending despair.
Thanks as always to our dear friends at
AfterTalk for sharing Dr. Neimeyer with us.
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