How to Grieve For Your Dead

While it is impossible not to grieve over the loss of one who was greatly cherished, it is possible to learn how to grieve with profit both to yourself and to the one whom death took away from you. There is nothing in human experience that cannot be faced and endured in a right way and a wrong way. The experience of bereavement is no exception to this rule. Only it must be noted that the right way to endure grief over the death of a loved one cannot be learned on the spur of the moment, nor in the sudden hour of its need. It must be mulled over beforehand. The right thoughts that must survive in one's consciousness through the emotional upheaval that goes with bereavement must have been pondered and made familiar long before the need arose.That is why the thoughts here presented should be considered carefully by all, even those who have never yet seen death fixed on the features of someone very close to them. We can think of only one kind of person who has no need for these thoughts. It is the supremely selfish man and woman who have never forgotten self long enough to love somebody else with a deep and wholehearted love. Such persons do not grieve very much when one close to them is taken by death. There is no need of trying to teach them how to grieve with profit. They need something far more essential; they need to be taught how to forget themselves in true and sincere love of someone else.