THE SEASONS OF GRIEF

"For everything, there is a season," a familiar verse [in Ecclesiastes] tells us.

Life and death come quickly in nature -- buds swell into green leaves, turn golden, then brown, and drop to the earth. Nature shows us [rebirth] as plants are reborn and flowers, once fresh with life, return to the earth to become nourishment for other plants.
 
Nature shows us seasons of life and death everywhere we look.  But nature seams not to mourn these deaths -- not the flowers, not even the animals. Within the lifecycle is a built-in process of survival as one part of nature nourishes another.
 
But people do mourn and grieve -- and so we alone need a season of grief. In this season, the seeds of rebirth are planted. What varies from person to person is the length of this season, the right time for harvest, and the time when rebirth comes.
 
When the seed of life is implanted in a woman we speak of her pregnancy going "full term." By this we mean that she will carry her unborn child the full term of nine months, without intervention. The season of grief must also be allowed, without intervention, to go to full term.
 
It makes me angry when people say, "Get on with your life, it's time to stop grieving." Nobody can tell you what the season of your grief is. It may be a summer, a winter, a spring, a fall, perhaps another winter -- or another -- or another.
 
Just as the gestation period varies from creature to creature, the natural process of grieving varies from person to person. The harvest of renewed life will come in its own season.
 
-- Ted Menten in “After Goodbye” 

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