There Is Something Good Here

Spalding Gray's body was found after his two month disappearance. I was reading the other night about the bittersweet place those who grieve find themselves in when a body is finally found.

Several people, after my parents deaths, told me how much better it is to be in some way able to experience the death of a loved one. With my mother, we were all around her bed and heard her last breath late on a Friday night, an exhausting day after I'd been up with her the whole night before. With my father, I was there with him alone at dawn and spent the last two hours of his life with him.

They say people who are not present for a loved one's death can feel really stuck, have a lot of trouble going on -- that they often return to the hospital where the person died, to the exact hospital room -- not quite believing it, not able to let go. I remember that feeling when I had a miscarriage and I had so much trouble believing it was happening, that the pregnancy was really gone, that our happiness about a new child was over.

I hope this gives his family a better way to say goodbye.