How do people go through grief and loss without falling apart?

Today is the 16th anniversary of my brother David’s yartzeit (anniversary of his death).

I don’t know where we get the strength to carry on. I think about how many people have come through the doors of my office with such tragedy and I don’t know how we don’t all end up in some insane asylum. I don’t know how some of us convert that pain into compassion, which I’ve been trying to do my whole life. I want to learn from the sorrow and transform it and transform other people’s lives in his name. I want think kind and to pass it forward.

I’m struck by how tender I feel. It’s been 16 years. It doesn’t feel that long.

How many people grieve? How do they put their pants on in the morning? How do they brush their teeth? How do they start their day? How do they bring meaning to things they don’t understand?

I think a lot of it has to do with faith. Those who believe experience death differently from those who see things without a Higher Power. We don’t think things just happen randomly. I believe in something greater. I don’t understand and I accept that.

It helps me to understand that these things are part of a bigger story.

I lost my 29-year old brother David to cancer. He was very healthy. He was a non-smoker. Etc. Etc. And so many people have these stories of people they have lost suddenly, whether it is in car accidents or child birth or cancer. I rarely hear the trauma of losing someone who lived a long healthy life. People come in and grieve the sudden death in a very different way from the loss of a loved one who lived a full life. Missing seems to be a very different emotion from grieving.

How we all move on from a sudden loss amazes me. I’m touched that I can still see beauty in a sunset. For a long time, I couldn’t. And then life started to seep into me.

I remember I was sitting shiva (the Jewish way of mourning) and I said to somebody, I don’t feel like I can do life. And they said, don’t worry about that. Life will come back to you.

And that’s what happened. Life came into me. Perhaps that is how we’re created. Like a plant goes towards the sun, we seek out life.