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While that’s certainly been an adjustment, it isn’t really what I mean. He just turned sixteen about a month ago, and he is more mobile and independent than he’s ever been. The most current sense of loss I’m dealing with is the fact that my older son is growing up. That’s kind of a prerequisite to calling something painful: it has to hurt. Pain is really hard to measure, and it certainly can’t be compared to anyone else’s pain. Or maybe I’ll compare it to what I think others have gone through. I’ll say that it isn’t that big of a deal, or that I don’t need any help. It can seem disrespectful to those who have lost so much more.īut, then again, that’s my tendency. To use it for smaller stuff almost seems like a disservice. It is pain that can make all other pain seem insignificant. I think of the death of a child or a husband. It evokes images of sackcloth and ashes, tombstones and hearses. The trouble I’ve had is that grief has always been such a big word to me. I like that one so much better, but it’s taken me a long time to get there. Grief is what you feel when something you love is taken from you. Here is a definition I came up with instead: What I’m finding, though, is that it is so much bigger than that. I know that there are other definitions that take a much broader stance, but this one really represents how I’ve seen grief. That definition is almost exclusively limited to death and mourning. Mourning occurs in response to an individual’s own terminal illness, the loss of a close relationship, or to the death of a valued being, human or animal. The stages of mourning and grief are universal and are experienced by people from all walks of life. This article about the stages of grief sums it up pretty well: Maybe that sounds silly, but I’ve always associated it with death or maybe even divorce. As it turns out, I’ve never really understood what it was. Until recently, grief has been one of those things for me. Do you ever have those moments where you wonder if you are the only person on the planet who is clueless about something? Everyone else sees it as completely obvious, but you’re left scratching your head.