I think we grieve because deep down we’re afraid that we will love someone less if they are not here, here to love us and give us attention and affection. We’re scared that if we forget them then, life is finite and meaningless and we’re scared of the nature of mortality. I think anyone who survives grieving survives because they become stronger than mortality. They start to feel comfortable that the love they have for their loved ones is strong and surviving and so maybe when we die, we too, will be remembered throughout eternity and be safe forever. From the moment I heard the news that he died I tried to think about what to do with my life and thought how terrible the future was, that I would have to exist with this fact that he is gone for the rest of my life, how long my life is! But I think really we are scared that when time passes we will forget them, we will love them less and less and they won’t be here to remind us to care for them and tend to our loving connection, and that scares us the most. But when you experience how the days and months and seasons pass and you wonder at how you love them just as much, as if they were within arms reach, here in this room, you begin to understand better the nature of love, you marvel at its power, how it is stronger than the very thing we all fear, death itself. You still love them just the same even when they can do nothing for you anymore. Then you begin to love without expectation: real love. And this experience of the organ of love, of it surviving and beating inside of us, trusting it, feeling it, learning it, using it, gives us hope and motivation to keep on using it. A life of quality requires us to care, not simply exist, and to go on living after grief, to go on building, expanding, growing, transforming, means to go on caring.