<p>Death does not always have a human face. Grief is not necessarily over a human connection. It can be animate or even inanimate. While mourning the loss of the connection, we also mourn ourselves as we were and never will be again. My grief has been extreme and overwhelming over the loss of my Labrador whom I learned to love like family. Her unconditional love and her trusting confidence are daily reminders of someone I will never see again.</p>.<p>A colleague, known for his tightfistedness, who will not tell you the time of the day for free or offer a cup of coffee without counting the cost became deeply attached to a newborn calf. He would watch the young animal prance and gambol in joy and caress it with a love he himself was unaware of.</p>.<p>Every day he would feed its mother bananas so that the calf would have good milk. Such was the bond between the man and the animal. Imagine his sorrow when one day he discovered the tiny calf lying dead in the cowshed after a snake bite. He went berserk with grief, took leave from office, mourned her for days.</p>.<p>There is the lady who nurtured a plant, a jasmine creeper of flowers and fragrance that framed her doorway. She adored the flowers, inhaled their fragrance first thing in the morning and thanked the creeper for being there for her. It was the pride of her garden and the solace of her heart. When the creeper was accidentally uprooted by careless hands her grief was complete.</p>.<p>An heirloom or a piece of memorabilia lost is the loss of preserved memories </p>.<p>"Grief turns out to be a place none of us knows until we reach it,” says Joan Dideon, the celebrated writer. It never recedes completely and leaves us with a diminished sense of self and social isolation. What is grief if not love persevering? Grief is an experience so private and yet so universal." We burrow in the hollow of our private losses and pass each other in the public square of human suffering. When the reconciliation does take place we are left with the love we have lost, a lasting commitment.</p>
<p>Death does not always have a human face. Grief is not necessarily over a human connection. It can be animate or even inanimate. While mourning the loss of the connection, we also mourn ourselves as we were and never will be again. My grief has been extreme and overwhelming over the loss of my Labrador whom I learned to love like family. Her unconditional love and her trusting confidence are daily reminders of someone I will never see again.</p>.<p>A colleague, known for his tightfistedness, who will not tell you the time of the day for free or offer a cup of coffee without counting the cost became deeply attached to a newborn calf. He would watch the young animal prance and gambol in joy and caress it with a love he himself was unaware of.</p>.<p>Every day he would feed its mother bananas so that the calf would have good milk. Such was the bond between the man and the animal. Imagine his sorrow when one day he discovered the tiny calf lying dead in the cowshed after a snake bite. He went berserk with grief, took leave from office, mourned her for days.</p>.<p>There is the lady who nurtured a plant, a jasmine creeper of flowers and fragrance that framed her doorway. She adored the flowers, inhaled their fragrance first thing in the morning and thanked the creeper for being there for her. It was the pride of her garden and the solace of her heart. When the creeper was accidentally uprooted by careless hands her grief was complete.</p>.<p>An heirloom or a piece of memorabilia lost is the loss of preserved memories </p>.<p>"Grief turns out to be a place none of us knows until we reach it,” says Joan Dideon, the celebrated writer. It never recedes completely and leaves us with a diminished sense of self and social isolation. What is grief if not love persevering? Grief is an experience so private and yet so universal." We burrow in the hollow of our private losses and pass each other in the public square of human suffering. When the reconciliation does take place we are left with the love we have lost, a lasting commitment.</p>