“Let us welcome Grief with open arms, and serve her Gratitude on silver platters…”

Endings are more bittersweet when you see them coming. Less of a shock, sure. But the Grief has more time to build anticipation. Then again, so does Gratitude. Is Gratitude enough to insulate Grief? Or does it merely accent it? The darkest crevices of Grief are accentuated by the glittery recognition of Gratitude, its bleakness made more apparent in gut-wrenching juxtaposition.

Someone said that facing Grief head on, staring straight into her eyes unblinking, is how we show our respect to Loss. Allowing ourselves to take in her heartbreak in all its gorey glory is the only way to give reverence to the sacredness of what we once had. I like that. It’s true. But this truth doesn’t make it any less hard.

Knowing that Loss is imminent almost makes preparing the eulogy more barbaric, doesn’t it? Isn’t it a bit selfish? To abandon hope for the sake of better bracing ourselves in a battle against pain? Seems like an argument in favour of pre-emptive defensiveness, a good excuse to never let down our walls and welcome in Love or Sacredness at all. 

Before I ever knew what romantic Love looked like, or could even grasp its essence, I’d toil with the question: “Is it better to have loved and lost, or to have never loved at all?” And Little Me would think to myself, probably. 

Recently, I’ve learned that Love isn’t even the greatest emotion inflicted upon humanity. Gratitude resonates appreciably higher than when measured for its transformative, transcendental potential. But perhaps Love is a necessary precursor to the existence of Gratitude. Perhaps Gratitude is the ultimate evolution of Love. 

What is Gratitude? To see something for its truth in its entirety and still adore the fact of its being so purely and wholeheartedly that just to Love it is not enough. Love is a machine that is built by perpetual motion, a bilateral connection and characteristically reciprocal in its truest form. Gratitude implies a reverence for the intrinsic value of a thing, regardless of any direct cause and effect dynamic. When we are Grateful for the beauty of a thing, we are Grateful for its existence regardless of whether or not we get to gaze upon its beauty at whim. When we Love the beauty of a thing, and it does not return the same level of admiration back, does the Love not in turn, diminish? We are Grateful because the thing invokes a sense of eternal, unconditional Love, even in the loss of it. 

Perhaps, inversely, Gratitude is also the ashes of a Love burned out. True Love’s ashes of Gratitude turn down a fertile bed within our hearts, so that Love may grow again someday. If the other side of Love does not look like a field abundant with freshly lain Gratitude, can we honestly say that our expedition was towards Love, at all? If an eclipse of Love gives way to morning rays that bathe resentment or worse, hatred, was that Love not merely a coverup of something more one-sided, valued simply as a means towards a more selfish end?

But when the sun surges up to bask a field of barren Grief, which happens only in the wake of a Love slashed and burned by Loss, someday that Grief will decay into the fertile ashes of Gratitude. And there, seeds of Future Loves may one day flourish freely, for the cycle to begin again. 

So yes, it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Without the purest form of Love, there could be no Gratitude, and without Grief there can be no measure of Loss sanctifying the sacredness of either. Perhaps, then, it is rather a blessing to foresee Grief crawling up the path before she knocks on our door. This gives us more time to prepare as gracious hosts, honouring the transformative power of Loss and Love through hospitality. 

Let us welcome Grief with open arms, and serve her Gratitude on silver platters to satiate the emptiness she carries inside. Let us listen to Grief’s stories, the highlights and hardships of her journey, the perils and pleasures she faced in pursuit of a Love once shared. She deserves to be heard.  

Patiently feeding Grief morsels of Gratitude eventually fills the holes left by Loss, and listening to her stories cements only the best memories, like leaving handprints in the freshly poured sidewalks of our mind. In return for such compassionate servitude and fortitude of Spirit during our inevitable visits with Grief, we are gifted with precious recipes for New Love, paving the way towards evermore eternal, unconditional reserves of Gratitude.