I wrote most of this post back in December and I’ve sat on it for a while, dissatisfied that it wasn’t expressing what I hoped it would. Converting grief into any kind of lesson or coherent feeling, it turns out, is very difficult. I’m sharing it anyway, since I don’t expect I can make it any clearer and perhaps some readers can relate.
My friend passed away last year. I am so grateful for him, and all he did for the world.
I wanted to thank him for so many things. I wanted to thank him for choosing to spend his time helping others. I wanted to thank him for being a good friend to me and my partner, who was also close to him. I wanted to thank him for being a loving husband and a loving parent.
The gap between the gratitude I want to express to my late friend and the gratitude I express to those who are alive is profound. This, and the powerful sense of loss that comes with passing up an opportunity to express that gratitude, makes me think I’m making a mistake. I’m probably not expressing nearly enough gratitude to those alive.
To thank anyone for what they do and have done for others to the extent that I would want to thank my friend feels impossible. How could I get the words out? The weight, the urgency, it would be too much. Nothing I could say would come close.
Reflecting on this loss has cut apart some of the ways I was thinking about what it means to lead a full life, and a life of doing good by others. If the length of our lives is undetermined, then concepts of accomplishment and “enoughness” as they relate to life look shaky and thin; ungrounded. What’s “enough” if we all have an indeterminate amount of time to get there? I haven’t made sense of this yet, but it feels very real.
If I’m to be so grateful, this grateful, for what my friend achieved in his life, I should treat lives differently. I want to express more gratitude, more kindness, acutely aware that lives can be so much shorter than they ought to be.
So many of us who strive to help others are doing far more in the eyes of our friends and colleagues than we realise. Reflecting on my friend’s life has given me many reasons to feel grateful to so many others, and has helped me become kinder to myself.
If you’re out there trying to live a good life and doing good by others, I’m very, very grateful. Savour it, too.