A couple of notes on grief

 It’s no credit to go through life and see a lot of things if you don’t understand them.

We smile at the tourists who crowd Paris with a list of must-see sights, racing from one to the other, checking them off the list. The presumption is that a full life can’t be lived unless you see them all — never mind what you understand of it all.

I can smile, but I’ve reached the Age of Medicare without coming to the slightest understanding of grief. I’ve seen plenty of it. I’ve observed how different people react to tragedy with the hope of making some generalizations about grief — and I just can’t. I just don’t understand it.

One of the first stories that Montaigne tells in the Essays is about Psammetichus’s grief. The original story comes from Herodotus.

Psammetichus, pharaoh of Egypt, was captured by Cambyses of Persia. Psammetichus showed no emotion when his daughter was led off to slavery and his son was led off to die. But he wept over the capture of a friend.

Montaigne’s view: The first two tragedies were simply beyond the means of expression.

Maybe so, but that seems dubious to me.

Boswell has a story in his biography of Samuel Johnson about grief. Johnson, hearing that an associate had lost his mother, sent a letter of condolence. Johnson suggested that the grieving man write down everything he could remember about his mother. The memories would a comfort as the years passed.

Maybe so, but it seems like an excruciating thing to do right after a loved one’s death.

When people suffer terrible losses, I’m at a loss for what to say.

I have come to understand a lot of things about life in the process of growing old. But I don’t understand grief at all.