Today is the final funeral service (of three) for my brother, Beau.
And while I can tell you that this is probably the last “Right as Rain” article directly addressing his death, I can also promise you that the lessons I’ve learned over the past month will stay with me forever and be embedded in my life, and work, for the rest of my days.
One of the most powerful of those lessons I’ve learned was shared with me in the form of a photo text message. It was a picture of a single piece of notebook paper, push-pinned to a wall, with the following quote hand-written on it:
“Grief doesn’t end, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. It is not a sign of weakness, nor lack of faith. It is the price of love.”
This came from a friend named Adam, whom I worked with in my college days. We haven’t seen each other in person in a long, long time. But he’s one of those friends that’s always there in the background — sending you a perfectly timed joke meme, congratulating you on the birth of a child, or showing you a passage that helped him when he lost his brother a few years ago.
The photo clearly wasn’t of Adam’s piece of paper. I assumed that it was shared with him by someone else whom it helped. And I have shared it with many people since receiving it.
Everyone that’s seen it has responded the same way I did: with full understanding and acceptance of its harsh and resounding truth.
Grief is something I wish none of us had to experience.
But when you understand that it is indeed the price of love, it becomes at least a little bit easier to bear.
Grief and love cannot exist without each other. They are two sides of the same coin. If you love someone, the fact is that while that love may not cease, the relationship inevitably will one day.
You will lose that physical relationship either by choice or not by choice, but you will lose it eventually. And on that day you will grieve.
You grieve because you knew love. And the deeper the love you experienced, the more profound the grief will be.
So you have to ask yourself, as I have asked myself many times over the past month: Would you trade the love you experienced so that you wouldn’t feel the grief you endure today?
That’s a question we must all ask and answer individually.
But my answer is undoubtedly “No.”
I would accept this grief—and I will—every single day for the rest of my life so that I may still have experienced the love that I shared with my brother.
We spend so much of our time trying to run and hide from the dark parts of our lives. But we often forget that darkness does not exist without light—only the absence of light. Just life grief doesn’t exist unless we love someone or something.
And no matter how strong darkness may be, and how small the opposing source of light may be, darkness can never overtake or extinguish the light.
Just like grief will never take away our love.
Rain Bennett is a two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker, writer, and competitive storyteller with over a decade of experience producing documentary films that focus on health and wellness. His mission is simple: to make the world happier and healthier by sharing stories of change.
You can read the rest of “Right as Rain” here, and check back every Wednesday on Chapelboro for a new column!
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