As I have said in previous posts, each person deals with Loss uniquely and deals with every Loss they experience in a unique way. So I have developed my own lexicon. The entire landscape, as I’ve said here before, is Loss. Sadness, depression with a small “d”, technically termed anhedonia, and grief sit within that landscape.

Often the complex of experiences following loss is termed Grief. In fact, the category for my posts under Blog on my site is called Grief. Many books about the experience have Grief in their title. But for me Grief is an emotion set within the context of the entire landscape of Loss.

I think of Sadness as a feeling brought about by thinking of happy moments with your deceased loved one. For example, I recently took a trip to Ketchum Idaho, aka Sun Valley, and fished with Linda and our guide and friend of 40 years, Scott Schnebly. One day we went to the Lost River east of Ketchum, Linda’s favorite “fishing hole”. I recited a verse from her beloved Tao te Ching, spread some of her ashes, which fanned out in the most amazing abstract pattern and sang Babe, by Styx. I felt Sadness but it felt good. It was brought about by a remembrance of happier times.

Linda’s form of ALS was genetic, which accounts for about 10% of all cases, and it’s ‘presentation’, as docs call it, was Spastic. Meaning extreme stiffness of her muscles. She was able to stand and walk, though with greater and greater difficulty, right up to the time when she went into hospice. When I walk into our bedroom, I often can ‘see’ the bedrail she used to pull herself up and out of bed and grab her walker. The effort she expended was huge. While it might take most of us 2 minutes to go to the bathroom it took her 20.

Then she would have to get back into bed, holding onto the bedrail and pushing with her legs against her walker while I held it in place, and pulling herself into a comfortable position in bed using the bedrail. For me, when I ‘see’ that image of the bedrail, I feel an intense negative emotion as my chest tightens and I tear up. Unlike Sadness, there is nothing redemptive about that emotion. No good side to it. For me that is Grief.