Grief and Life Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Grief and Life - Essay Example At first she thought that the feeling of meaninglessness and the feeling of grief are very different from each other. But she realizes, after being a mother and a wife, and after losing someone she dearly loves, that what she felt as a child was very similar from the grief that struck her as an adult. This essay talks about the journey of Didion through grief, particularly how she describes her experience with grief in terms of the feeling of meaninglessness that plagued her throughout her young life. Didion explains how different our notion of ‘grief’ is from what it really is in real life. She explains how our expectations of grief are too ‘simple’ or ‘easy’. We know that we will lose someone we love. We expect to go through definite changes, and ‘heal’ immediately. We expect that we should be strong during this very tough time (Worden, 40). Didion explains such in the following manner: â€Å"In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be ‘healing’. A certain forward movement will prevail† (Didion, 392). We think that the normal course of grief is toward ‘healing’ or ultimate ‘acceptance’ of a loss of a loved one. That we do not have to exert too much effort in moving on because everything will resolve by itself. She adds that â€Å"we imaging that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place† (Didion, 392). She mentions ‘hypothetical’ to emphasize the fact that this belief is somewhat flawed. However, based on her experience with grief, it is an emotion that does not subside easily; it is an emotion that is very difficult, sometimes impossible, to deal with. As Didion says, â€Å"We have no way of knowing†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Grief is something that is uncertain; something that is unimaginable (Didion, 392). Grief is a feeling of