A story about grief

 Maybe some people wake up in the morning and have a desire to create something.

It’s not so for me. If I write something, it usually comes from a drive to work out a difficulty in my life.

One of my friends recently lost his wife. I naturally want to console him — and I know that’s impossible.

It’s a miserable, impossible feeling. We love our friends, and it’s a human impulse to want to comfort them. But it’s also part of being human that we must face certain things alone.

Here is how Luigi Pirandello, a Sicilian writer who won a Nobel Prize, turned that difficulty into art:

 “The Soft Touch of Grass” tells of Signor Pardi, who has lost his wife. The old man is waiting for the procession that would take his wife’s body to the church.

He hates every intrusion — those of the callous undertakers and those of well meaning family and friends.

What did they know about her? They could not even imagine what it meant to him to be deprived of her.

Just so. Pirandello got it as it is.