I Am The Indoctrinated Child Of Two

And After My Mother's Death I Became More Open To And Empathetic About Other People's Struggles And Losses.

This Is Part Of The Complexity Of Grief: A Piece Of You Recognizes It Is An Extreme State, An Altered State, Yet A Large Part Of You Is Entirely Subject To Its Demands.

I Wasn't Prepared For The Fact That Grief Is So Unpredictable. It Wasn't Just Sadness, And It Wasn't Linear. Somehow I'd Thought That The First Days Would Be The Worst And Then It Would Get Steadily Better - Like Getting Over The Flu. That's Not How It Was.

One Of The Things About Grief Is That It Can Bring A Deeper Perspective Into Your Life; In The End, It Has, For Me, Though It's Also Brought Sorrow.

I Was Not Raised With Religion, And I Had No Faith Before My Mother Died. On The Other Hand, When She Died, I Did Not Immediately Feel She Was "gone." I Don't Believe She Is In Something Like Heaven, But I Also Feel That We Don't Understand Much About The Nature Of The Universe. So I Hold On To That Uncertainty, At Times.