Grief is the Price We Pay for Love

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

— Spoken by Queen Elizabeth II after saying goodbye to Prince Philip after 73 years of marriage.*

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live a life without grief?

It would be like the person who said, “If only I didn’t have to face grief, how wonderful my life would be. I’d have freedom from the pain of loss and a life of bliss!”

If I removed grief, would I have a life of bliss?

Think about it. If you take away the possibility of losing someone you love, what do you actually have left?

Your wonderful life without the possibility of loss would look something like this:

• You could have everything money can buy but no one to share it with
• You could be known the world over by your brilliance but come home every night to an empty house and your dog
• You could make music that filled stadiums with raving fans but be left without anyone to care about you when you were silent
• You could travel anywhere in the world but have no true companion to travel with you

People Make Life Worth While

People make life worth while. We create memories with people. We sit in a room without words with the people we care about. We laugh with people. We cry with people.

People who care about us seek to understand us before they are understood.

The truth is, our mortality ensures that we will not live forever. This broken planet brings disease, accidents, broken relationships, and unexpected loss.

The price you and I pay for love is to eventually be forced to say goodbye.

If we learn to embrace and welcome grief as a natural and normal part of the human experience, we might decide to become better grievers so we can be engaged lovers of the people we will eventually lose.

I have decided to be a student of grief so that I can live more courageously as one who loves much knowing full well that some day I will have to say goodbye to those I love.

Final Thought

The full quote that contains “grief is the price we pay for love” was written by Dr. Colin Murray Parkes. It is found in his book Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life. It is rich in meaning and worth including here.

“The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love: it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment. To ignore this fact, or to pretend that it is not so, is to put on emotional blinkers which leave us unprepared for the losses that will inevitably occur in our own lives and unprepared to help others cope with losses in theirs.”

Dr. Colin Murray Parkes