I was 14 when my maternal grandfather died suddenly at the age of 78. He was a good man, a great role model, and a huge figure in my young life. It was the first time in my life I had lost someone I loved; it was the first time I had to deal with the concept of death. It took me a while to wrap my young mind around the fact that my Grandpa was gone and I’d never see him, never talk to him again; that I would never again hear him laugh, smell his shaving soap, hear his old pocket watch ticking in the bib pocket of his overalls.
We all have to learn to deal with loss, and we all deal with it in our own ways. It’s a sad fact of life; people are born, they live, and in time, they die, and the people who cared for them have to deal with that. But avoiding it? Pretending it didn’t happen? I’m no head-candler, but that doesn’t seem healthy. So I wonder about the wisdom of trying to leverage…
