When I hear the word 'grief' my mind immediately leaps to that image of her. She sat alone on a bench, her uneaten sandwich laying forgotten by her side. Her eyes, oblivious to the full summer beauty that surrounded her, were fixed, unseeing, on the horizon. There was nothing but sadness in her expression - she missed him. No anger, no betrayal, no regret, and no blame. Just grief.
Her husband had died not even a month ago; too young, too sudden, too terrible to contemplate. I knew her to see her. We smiled to each other often on better days. I wanted to offer her my sympathy, but I held back. There is something too crass about a relative stranger offering sympathy for a lost life they never knew. Something too crass about the tragic public figure we are all made to become when a loved one dies. First the loss, then the immediate frenzy of arrangements and the flooding of mourners gazing upon our most intimate of sorrows. Then it is over, the survivors cruelly launched into the world again; forced to realize that life must somehow continue.
Such a loss, raking an indelible divide across the landscape of a life. Yet, she sat there so sadly and with such strength. She wasn't angry; she wasn't begging for it all to change or waiting for a rescue that would never come. She simply accepted her lot. For that I believe her sadness was the purest thing I'd ever witnessed, and the most meaningful image of grief that I will ever hold.
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