“Grief is the price we pay for love,” said the late Queen Elizabeth II after the mass murders of 9/11. She didn’t actually come up with the phrase – it was coined by a British psychiatrist called Colin Murray Parkes – but it doesn’t matter. The old girl had a gift for understanding the zeitgeist and, as so often, her words resonated, even with those of us who are closer to republicanism than monarchism. After a year in which I have endured what feels like an overwhelming number of close bereavements, any way in which I can take positives out of something so depressing has to be a good thing. So, what are the positives?
The main one is love. I don’t intend to employ the resources of Google in order to come up with the best definition of the word love. Perhaps, it’s indefinable, I don’t know. Better wordsmiths than I can probably come up with the answers, but I know now, more than I ever did, what love feels like. To those who have left us, the love we have reminds us of what we once had and how lucky we were to feel it.
I have now reached a place where I am beginning to think how lucky I am to have known, and loved, so many special people. Their deaths were terribly sad, although in some cases a blessing, a deliverance from pain and discomfort and each individual death has had a cumulative effect. At first, I found I could not cry. Now, sometimes I am fighting to hard to stop. I cannot feel anything but sadness for those who left us prematurely, so the Queen’s words matter and give some context and meaning in terribly difficult times.
I always knew how lucky I was – how lucky I remain – to have so many good friends and family members. We shared good and great times together. If I had not known them all, my life would have been so much poorer. Maybe the grief I feel is a price worth paying? I think it very much is.
The odds of anyone being born at all are around 1 in 400 trillion. I can barely get my head round that figure because, well, how can you? The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million, the odds of winning the lotto are 1 in 40 million, the odds of correctly guessing someone’s 11 digit phone number are 1 in a billion so you get the idea. I hate using the word ‘miracle’ for anything, but it does seem somewhat miraculous to have been born at all and then to be related to or be friends with someone else. We are the lucky ones. The good times and the love we shared just had to be worth it. And inevitably nothing lasts forever.
Trying to take something positive out of grief takes time. The loss will alway be there although time is, if only partially, a great healer. How much time, well that’s another story. It depends on so many things, some almost indefinable. For some deaths, usually the sudden, wholly unexpected deaths are the hardest to overcome. I know that from experience, although I have to say that the losses of 2025 are still blended inexorably in my mind. I can hardly separate one from another but I know that should, someday soon, change.
So, I should be happy that grief is the price we pay for love because at least we were able to love, if only for a short time. As with being born at all, those of us who have loved, and been loved, are the lucky ones.
