Hi Friends,
Decades ago, I first learned about the professional mourners once prevalent in Spain—the plañideras who were hired to weep at funerals.
Their wails gave voice to grief too deep for words. Their cries also gave those in attendance permission to embody their loss, to release the pain of losing and being left behind.
Many cultures acknowledge the value of giving permission to grieve, even though they aren’t as common anymore.
In contrast, we in the United States have three days of bereavement leave and well-meaning friends who tell us to stay strong, or family that moves on like the person never existed.
Losing a pet is unlike any pain I've ever felt.
This week, as I cry for the loss of my friends' dog Adeline—a sweet senior gal they adopted around the time I moved to LA—I find myself wanting to wail like those grievers of old.
I loved their dog. Not in the same way they did, but deeply and truly. For me, her absence leaves its own particular hollow.
I was one of a select few Adeline was comfortable with. I was honored to care for her during the handful of times they traveled.
The tears I’ve been crying since Tuesday aren’t just for her.
They are for my dog Shy, whom we lost in 2019—a female boxer who, despite her name, was anything but shy. I learned a lot about myself because of her. She continues to teach me even in death.
The tears are for my father, gone thirty years now.
They're for the relationships and friendships that ended.
They're for pandemic years we can't get back.
They're for the apartment I'm leaving at the end of the month.
And they're for the life I thought I'd be living.
I'm learning that grief is like an ocean. Each loss is a wave that comes to shore, carrying with it the undertow of every loss that came before.
We try to stand firm against it, to maintain our composure, to keep our heads above water.
But maybe that's not what grief asks of us.
Maybe grief is meant to move through us like water. It finds its own channels, reshapes what it touches, and returns us to something deeper than our individual forms.
Grief needs to be expressed, like those hired mourners knew. It needs space to expand, to be felt, to be heard, to be shared.
So consider this your permission slip.
To cry in your car.
To wail in your apartment (even if the neighbors might hear).
To feel the full weight of what's gone.
To let the waves come, and to trust that like water, you'll find new ways of being. You're not drowning. You're learning to swim in deeper waters.
