I’ve been working on my new book about grief, and I noticed how often I used the word “irony.” No wonder. Grief seems to be fraught with ironies.
It is devastatingly ironic that the one person we need to turn to help us with our grief is the very person who is gone.
It is ironic that it is we bereft who have to be understanding of and make allowances for the thoughtless things people say to us.
It is ironic that when we most need people, they make themselves scarce, as if grief is a terrible and terribly contagious disease.
It is ironic that while grief is not a disease, it is a dis-ease.
It is ironic that when we are at our weakest, as we are after a grievous loss, we have to be our strongest.
It is ironic that grief, which seems to be something that needs to be healed, is actually the way we heal from the traumatic assault perpetrated by the grim reaper.
It is ironic that we’re supposed to believe life is worth living at the very same time we’re supposed to believe the dead are in a better place.
It is ironic that while we are dealing with the most profoundly painful time of our lives, we have the most mundane tasks to complete.
Some of these might not be strictly ironies, but I’m padding the list.
Can you think of any more ironies of grief? I’d like to do a chapter for the book on irony, but what I have here wouldn’t make much of a chapter. Normally, I’d fill out a chapter with explanations of my various points, but there’s really no need to explain any of these ironies because the irony is evident.
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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
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