OP
What have your learnt from loss and grief in your life and what can you teach those battling with grief following the loss of a loved one?
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What I most resonate with about grief is as V.S Naipaul said in his essay The Strangeness of Grief - it is part of the fabric of living; it is always waiting to happen; we are never finished with it. Sometimes we are grieving someone we loved who is deceased, sometimes it is someone we had animosity toward and matters were left unresolved, sometimes it is a pet, a place we lost as home, time we lost, work we lost that we identified with, a family role that is no more, sometimes we grieve the innocence of childhood or a missed childhood, a missed opportunity we imagine was the purpose of our lives, sometimes we grieve being next to someone physically and feeling they are lost to us. The central element of the different types of grief is loss. Embrace the grief that will come to you in the strangest and unexpected of moments, allow yourself that moment of sorrow with self-compassion, and surpisingly, joy too comes in some moments that still feel like grief. As we embrace these moments, through our lifetime, we can begin to contemplate on the metamorphosis the loss can take - what can it become, what can it serve. Something was taken from me, but what did I gain of it - a love I appreciated, a perspective I can apply in service of our humanity, a story I can share, something new that I can build, learning to let go of the obsolete parts of self and/or others. The law of physics is that energy can never be destroyed; it can only be transformed or transferred - and that is our work with grief: to embrace, to transfrom and to transfer what that has become through service and with compassion. Without this, we would then harm others with our grief. Having said this, there is no short cut, no linear path, and that is why embracing means embracing the anger it may come with, the lack of compassion we may feel, the self-centeredness of grief that sometimes only sees itself. Keep an open heart as you navigate these and you will be able to have better agency of the shape it takes - how does this grief that will be a lifelong companion, expand vs. shirnk life's meaning for you.