Grief and Meaning

Grief and meaning. The topic has been on my list for a while, and now seemed right. I got started, but I had nothing.

A question did occur to me, though: What is the meaning of meaning? I looked it up on my phone. The first definition I came to said meaning is ‘what is meant.’ Not helpful. 

I scrolled down and found another. ‘Meaning is what is intended to be, or actually is, expressed.’ Better. But that’s about the speaker expressing himself, and grief is not an independent actor, but part of us. It’s true I’ve personified grief in some of these posts, but to try to capture its presence and sway over us, not to argue that it’s an independent being. 

But could it be? If grief is so powerful that it can, with the snap of a finger, bring us so close to the person we grieve—‘Why isn’t this cabinet pull sticky with Jill’s candy?  . . . Oh yes, she’s dead.’—while reminding we are a million miles apart as long as we are still alive and Jill is still dead, then perhaps grief is, or might as well, be independent of us. 

What difference does it make? Well, I wondered if the idea that grief, in effect, has a mind of its own, could apply at the historical and collective level, say to a country, say to ours. And if this idea, with imagination and commitment, could lend us urgency and focus for confronting the grief, guilt, and sin we’ve gathered up in our history, and set us on a path to recovery. 

My holiday wish. 

What do you think?