Realities in the land of grief.

    Wang Lung the protagonist in The Good Earth recognizes that his life is coming to an end. He walks on his land, lives again in the farm house, abandoning his mansion in town and studies the burial ground on land. He would be buried near his first wife, O-lan.
"Then he went into the enclosure and he looked carefully and he saw the place where he would lie below his father and his uncle and above Ching and not far from O-lan. And he stared at the bit of earth where he was to lie and he saw himself in it and back in his own land forever."

Buck, Pearl S.. The Good Earth (The Good Earth Trilogy Book 1) (p. 208). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition
   
       I. too, walk on the land and then visit Joanne in the cemetery. There I see the place where I will lie and my name and birth date on the marker with space left for the date I die.
 
."And in this the widow’s deep grief was softened, and a sweet balm was poured into the wound which she had thought nothing but death could heal. How much kinder is God to us than we are willing to be to ourselves! At the loss of every dear face, at the last going of every well beloved one, we all doom ourselves to an eternity of sorrow, and look to waste ourselves away in an ever-running fountain of tears. How seldom does such grief endure! How blessed is the goodness which forbids it to do so! ‘Let me ever remember my living friends, but forget them as soon as they are dead,’ was the prayer of a wise man who understood the mercy of God. Few perhaps would have the courage to express such a wish, and yet to do so would only be to ask for that release from sorrow, which a kind Creator almost always extends to us."

Trollope, Anthony. Barchester Towers (AUK Revisited Book 8) (p. 10). Andrews UK Ltd. Kindle Edition.

      Trollope has captured the movement of grief from acute to chronic.  "At the loss of every dear face, at the last going of every well beloved one, we all doom ourselves to an eternity of sorrow, and look to waste ourselves away in an ever-running fountain of tears. How seldom does such grief endure! How blessed is the goodness which forbids it to do so!"  The author is correct; the grief that begins as a knife stabbing in one's ribs subsides to a sure and certain ache. Yet, in the land of grief there is opportunity for satisfaction, meaning and even joy.

Takk for alt,

Al