Grief::Joy

My family recently lost a friend, Juan Rosales, whose brilliance and deep love had enriched our lives profoundly. All the emotions you might expect have been kicked up by this, from the most "respectable" (reading C.S. Lewis on grief) to the least "respectable" (you know, the competition for "most bereaved" that sometimes happens in families). My approach in this moment is to practice what I call "two-sides of the coin," feeling the loss but trying to pair it with the joy. 

This is a practice I stumbled on in the aftermath of my nephew Avery's death from leukemia. That night, my niece Jaden wrote on a blackboard, "Avery met Leo!" meaning Leonardo DiCaprio. I realized we all had that choice -- to remember the incredible joy of Avery's life, or to pine for the loss, or maybe to feel both, like knowing a coin has heads and tails. 

Jaden said recently that whenever she thinks about Avery's good fortune, it makes her smile. Whenever I envision what she wrote on that board, I smile -- it was incredible that it happened and so right with the kind of luck Avery had. Of course, the huge luck was part of the loss and weighed the grief with all the "would haves..." But the luck was also part of the joy, as he strode through life accomplishing so much!

Juan was the same. I thought of him on the Supreme Court -- of course, the Supreme Court of a slightly more evolved USA -- and I still love to imagine how much fun those hearings would have been with Justice Juan on the bench! It makes me smile, even though it didn't really happen. I could regret that we didn't get to see that -- and of course I do -- but the sheer memory that I knew someone so gifted makes me laugh with glee. 

So I think, if I were going to write a book on the subject, I would write a book on grief::joy, and put them together. This is what I wish I'd known at 20 when my father died, sundering my world and setting me adrift for ten very long years: that one day I would have such joy that we had the complicated relationship that we had, that it would be the great treasure of my life.