Unknowing the Unknown
To ask what grief is, mon ami, is to invite oneself to chase shadows, to embrace air, and to hold a mirror to the mist of the soul. It is a questionless answer, a temptation for the mind to wrestle with the ineffable, to name the unnameable. And yet, as I sit with the thought, I find myself not nearer to the heart of grief but more entangled in its many veils and illusions.
There has been by some spirits a clever endeavor to bind grief in the chains of definition, to parse it as if it were no more than a tractable plant in the garden of human sentiment. They will dissect it with their sciences, lay out its anatomy, and pronounce its stages like the steps of a solemn dance. But grief is no obedient creature to the order of the mind. It is a feral force, wild as the woods and boundless as the ocean, which scoffs at paths and signs and charts and compasses. To think one has pinned it down is to realize it has slipped from under the net and resurfaces elsewhere, untouched and untamed.
Is grief merely the absence of a cherished thing, the echo of love now silenced? Is it the sundering of the self, a wound dealt by the sharp sword of subverted expectations? Or is it the reflection of our fragile estate, a trembling before the great void that awaits all of us? It seems to me that grief may be all these things, or none, for to name it fully would be to diminish it, to make it smaller than it truly is, to obscure the path back to it by casting more light than is needed.
Grief is not a possession to be scrutinized nor a tool to be employed; it is a condition, a transformation, a shifting of the soul’s axis. One does not merely observe grief. No, one inhabits it, as a traveler inhabits an alien land, as a flame consumes the wick and changes both itself and its fuel in the process. And yet, for all its immensity, grief hides itself within us as well, and the contours of its form escape even our own understanding.
Do not expect grief to comport itself with logic, for the heart and the mind often find themselves at cross purposes in this matter. Reason too often finds itself bankrupt in the face of the reality of Grief. What would be a rational comfort to the brain—the unfolding of time, the balm of philosophy, the assurance of science, the habit that is causation—may be nothing but ashes to the heart that feels its loss anew with each breath. To grieve is to live amidst the ruins of what was once a coherent world, where certainties dissolve and we wander as exiles among memories and dreams.
Grief humbles us. It reminds us, wordlessly though in no uncertain terms, of our finitude, of the constricted bounds of our wisdom, of just how narrow is the spectrum of our vision. It invites us to stand on the brink of life’s greatest riddles and stare into the chasm of want, trembling yet resolute, asking not for answers but for courage. The courage to gnaw at our tethers, to view a horizon we know will be wiped away, the courage, not permission, to persist.
But perhaps, I dare to wonder, the question “What is grief?” is itself flawed. Is it not better to ask, “What does grief make of us? Who are we in Grief?” For grief may not be a thing to understand; it is not merely something unknown but is itself an unknowing. It is an architect of the soul. It tears down, yes, but it also rebuilds. Do you see, mon chéri, what this means? Grief will break you, yes, but it will also build you. It strips us bare, yet in so doing prepares and indeed dresses us in new garments. It is as much a crucible as a calamity, as much a crisis as a catastrophe, forging within us a new reckoning with life’s tender fragility.
Let us, then, abandon the need to capture grief like a wild bird, for it is its nature to fly freely, unfettered. Instead, let us consider how we are to live with it, how to drink from its bitter cup without succumbing entirely to despair. In grief’s turbulence, may we discover the hidden currents of renewal; in its shadows, may we perceive the faint but steady glimmer of meaning. For to grieve is to love deeply, and to love, in the end, is to inhale the fullest breath of what it means to be human.
I do not know what Grief is, and perhaps no one ever will. But I do not need to know, and neither do you, to be present with Grief.
I will sit here with you, and we can grieve together.
The Grieviary 