the benefit of mourning

A mommy friend of mine, several months ago, wrote that the difference between mourning and grieving is that mourning is active grief.  It's the things we do because of grief, the time period immediately after tragedy when our grief is all we do.

This time for this is becoming less socially acceptable.  But that's not what I really am thinking of right now.

My husband and I have been watching old episodes of the show "Lie to Me," as we've just recently been introduced to the show.  A recently watched episode was of a boy who figured out his parents had adopted him and were lying to him, and he was trying to figure out who he was.  He thought he was a boy who had been abducted as a baby, gone for 16 years.

So they go to talk to the parents of that boy, and it turns out he wasn't that boy.  He wasn't that boy because that boy had drowned accidentally in the bathtub, and the wife never told the father.  I found this horrifying.  Horrifying that the wife, in lying to her husband, had robbed him of his ability to mourn and grieve the loss of his son.  Instead he'd lived 16 years of limbo, sad that he was gone, but hope that one day he'd return.

It made me think of how important it was and is for me, this grief.  The acceptance that she is gone, and that life must go on without her.  Without that, the small healing that comes with time can't happen.  It hurts to accept that, but in the end it is better than not being able to.