The Flight of Grief

The Flight of Grief

            Grief is an interesting human emotion.  Science shows us that even our animal cousins can feel this unique pain but humans have always wondered if they comprehend what it is to go through grief.  In my life, my mother has plaid a huge part in allowing me to become who I want to be and as a child, she molded me as a potter would a soft piece of clay.  As any child does, deep emotions are often times lost, the true meaning not fully understood.  Dealing with an emotion such as grief, how could any child know how to truly comprehend the longing pain, which cuts through your heart?  I learnt young, saying goodbye to my father’s father not long after I just met him.  I knew he was gone, but I didn’t know where he went.  My mother was there for my father and our family.  Being from New York, the first quote that struck me was by Dorothy Parker in how she pointed out that “as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you’ll live through the night.”

            This quote from her not only brings out the emotion of longing in my heart, but also a more senile acceptance to the meaning.  New York, being sometimes a hostile place when the sun goes down, also holds great beauty.  The quote is saying that if one can get through the transition into the darkness, you will come out of it and live on to see the next morning, which holds meaning to the metaphorical connection to stages of grief.  This quote brings out a feeling of longing, the sweeter kind, mind you.  But also, it reminds me of my mother’s father who passed right before I was born.  In my family, there is a tender story of how my mother, learning she could not have children of her own, asked her father at his deathbed for a child when he meets God.  He promised her he would send down a child for his daughter and the day after he passed, I was born in a small town in Russia.  This story came to my mind as I read this quote because my grandfather was a passionate New Yorker and loved living there, bringing up my mother in Flushing Queens.  The loss of this man whom I never got to meet in the flesh has stayed with me until this day and this quote seems like him, something he would believe in and the true meaning of pressing on to the brighter days was something he held close to his heart.

            The second quote that sparked my interest was how “grief is itself a medicine” by William Cowper annoys me because of the truth behind it.  In literature, I have noticed how grief moves the plot and introduces major character development on that subtle scale.  In one of my favorite graphic novel series, Naruto, the main character goes through enough grief for thousands of lifetimes and just before he gives up, something inside him reminds him of why he is living and whom he is living for.  In this process of realization and learning from his grief, he becomes a stronger person and the protagonist of the eighty book series.  It indeed is interesting how authors and illustrators portray grief and how one can morph it to fit their feelings about the potency of this feeling.

            In the animal kingdom, grief shows the difference between our animal cousins and us.  However, wolves are known to show grief in severe ways, shown in the tales of how animals have died waiting for their master to return home from a war that took their lives.  Also elephants have been known to go on rampages when a beloved one of their social group passes or is hunted down.  Though, humans do not show the same behavior, we have the cranial capacity to process and pull apart our grief into stages.  Represented by Cowper’s quote, the stages of grief end up at acceptance that promotes a positive push forwards into the world.  Indeed grief arrives outside of losing someone; it has similar effects when related to another situation.  I know when I tore my ACL and was out of all physical activity, which I love, the grief almost made me believe that there would be no tomorrow, no beautiful horizon to gaze at when I pulled through.  Even while still recovering from after a year of hard work, I can almost taste the sweet honey of success as I can run and jump without worrying about re-injury.

            These things are the signs of grief healing you and the soul, making people better than they were before.  Granted, some may take longer than others as Henchard did while ‘grieving’ over his malignant marriage to Susan.  By selling her due to his grief, he realized his fault and worked to improve himself.  Even in Never Let Me Go, Madame’s reaction to Kathy dancing with her imaginary babies shows grief, an older and staler grief than the sharpness of fresh bad news.  However, a sense of happiness or a tender atmosphere is written into the words on the page, though they are just 2-D images before my eyes.

            The key to portraying grief, which follows some sort of loss in literature, is in how it impacts the world the author has created in their minds and place down on paper before the readers.  What makes reading so interesting and powerful is how everyone can relate to something, emotions.  The characters go through emotions, which we all are familiar with; no matter how isolated the situation is from us.  This is the true impact of writing and I find it funny or peculiar how our emotions can be so severely taunted by simplex words staring back at you on a page.  Without strong emotions like grief or love, no story will be able to properly draw out who each reader is individually or allow people to connect.  Human beings connect with each other and being social creatures, we love one another, no matter how much we would like to deny it.  With emotions like grief, we all have been there and empathy comes naturally.  These two quotes have brought me back to times I would like to forget but also times where I feel blessed to have learned from.

Works Cited

Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge; the Life and Death of a Man of Character. New York: Modern Library, 1950. Print.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 1-89. Print.