There’s Just Loss

A few days ago, Carolyn Hax had a great point about painting grief and disappointment with the same brush; treating both as something to get over or put in perspective.

A person wrote her because they were having trouble getting through a series of deaths, all in a row. Hax answered:

“I know there is so much worse stuff going on in the world right now.” This can be a useful thought exercise for dealing with disappointment, say, but for grief, especially on so many fronts? There’s no “first-world loss,” there’s just loss — unless your Mercedes-Benz has died.

I hate the usage of “first-world” as a slang term — it’s a demeaning term — but I love how she shuts down the Pain Olympics thoughts. Or really, the opposite of the Pain Olympics thoughts, since this is the person minimizing their loss and self-judging their ability to deal with it. Loss is loss. Marking your own as “better” or “worse” doesn’t change the circumstances or the feelings of grief.

I was thinking about it the next day as I watched the news about Notre Dame. Hax’s words came back to me: “there’s just loss.” This is a loss, and while it is good that so much was saved, it doesn’t minimize the deep grief at watching history go up in flames.

We shouldn’t need permission to mourn, but it’s always good to have the reminder.