Grief – Love – Joy

In the past two weeks I have experienced the depths of great grief and the heights of joy – a bittersweetness that has permeated my inner being. On Christmas Day, my beloved aunt and surrogate mom got her angel wings and passed into another existence. On December 30, my lovely granddaughter began her new life as a married woman. Depths and heights, bittersweet and achingly beautiful.

I used to think that I was capable of only one emotion at a time. I couldn’t love and be angry at the same time. I could not find joy in grief. After many years of living, I realize that we are multi-dimensional beings, capable of holding many emotions simultaneously. I can be angry and still love. I can feel grief and joy, love and hate, all in the same moment. In fact, I am meant to have wildly differing feelings about any given moment.

For example, in losing my aunt, I felt both joy and deep grief – joy that she was finally free of her frail body and confused mind and sorrow that she was gone. I was happy for her and sad for myself. I will miss her in so many ways.

At my granddaughter’s wedding I felt the same two emotions, joy and grief – joy for two lives joined together in love and promise, grief at the thought that my own life is passing so quickly. Both emotions were strongly present in me and not at all contradictory.

So many of our emotions are opposite sides of the same coin. In the case of grief and joy, what binds these emotions together is love. Without love, I would not grieve loss. Without love I would not know joy. I can hold both of these strong emotions simultaneously because in essence I can’t have one without the other. I must love in order to feel either. Love is the catalyst for feeling both joy and grief.   

Love is the key component in our emotions. If I can find the love in what I am feeling in the moment – grief, rage, joy, surprise, fear, gratitude, annoyance, or myriads of other emotions – I can find a way to reconcile what seems to be conflicting feelings. I can accept the bitter with the sweet. I can allow the feelings to be what they are, to allow them to flow through me, and to be at peace within the tumult of many emotions flowing at once. Grief – Love – Joy,  flowing together in a dance of life.

Barbara Garland
January, 2022