Nothing in this life comes for free, even though we sometimes imagine it does.
Everything valuable we receive needs to be paid for somehow.
Eventually the bill comes due for all of us, no matter how hard we try to avoid it.
Death demands payment. When the separation happens between us and the people who mean the most to us, the instant they are gone—we suddenly realize how much the closeness is going to cost. We learn that we are going to pay for a lifetime in profound sadness, in tears that come from nowhere, in holidays that will never be the same, in loneliness that creeps up and sucker punches you.
Grief is the tax on loving people.
It is the inevitable price for being loved well; necessary payment on the accrued capital gains of intimacy and time with them.
The morning I found out that my father had died, immediately I began paying for everything: the mid-day naps together when I was a toddler, spontaneous trips to get ice cream, car rides home from roller skating, passionate cheers from the bleachers even when I was riding the bench, thousands of seemingly ordinary family dinners, long drives to the beach for vacations, countless calls just to see how I was, delivery room celebrations, decades of inside jokes—an infinite portfolio of beautiful memories.
For the forty-four years I was fortunate enough to have my father, I was wealthy in love, and so now I am rich in loss.
That’s how this works.
It has to work that way, because if it didn’t hurt as much as it does, if it didn’t merit the tears and the breakdowns and the emptiness—it probably wouldn’t have been as beautiful as it was.
When I find myself sitting with people who are grieving, I know there is no fixing what feels broken, no magic words to help them sidestep the hell, no alleviating the scalding pain, no way I can spare them any of the sadness—and it’s a good thing that I can’t. I try to remind them that the severity of the pain in separation now, is confirmation of the strength of the connection then. Their tears are a tribute.
When we lose parents, and friends, and partners, and children, and people who matter to us, the pain is profound and ever-present—but we can take solace in its severity, because we know we lived with an embarrassment of riches to begin with. We were known and cared for and loved, and we lived close enough to someone to memorize the shape of their hands and the sound of their laughter and the smell of their heads and the billion idiosyncrasies that only we were close enough to discover. That is worth whatever we have to spend in mourning now.
I’ll be paying back the tax on being my father’s son for the rest of my life, and as unbearable as it often is—I’m happy to pay it because I will always come out ahead, I will never be in deficit, I will always be in the black.
Grief is a small penalty for the immeasurable treasure of loving and being loved.
