By Dan Wellock
“It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.”
A year has passed since my hero died.
I bought a car. I got promoted. I married the love of my life. I started psychotherapy and switched therapists. I got a cat. I suffered a bad ear infection.
In all the things—the mundane and the extraordinary—I missed my brother. He wasn’t in the passenger seat with me in my new corolla, singing like nobody was listening. He never called and congratulated me on my new position at work. There was an empty chair for him at my wedding, one covered in yellow roses for him, but that no amount of beauty could fill. My ear hurt more from not hearing his voice than from the bacteria inflaming it.
My mind is continually bent on this loss. And yet, I’ve been somewhat of a hypocrite. In the months following his death, I wrote a series of three articles about mindfulness and grief. In those, I claimed that healthy grieving includes being mindful of the pain. We may want to numb ourselves, but the grief must be confronted. While I did engage in some mindfulness practices, I ended up filling my life with work and research to the effect that I had no time to feel. As a result, my grief bottled up and manifested at all the wrong times. If anything, I am a case study for not being mindful enough, despite my research on the subject.
As I have begun to jump into the feelings associated with grief—that experience which is all too bitter yet keeps a connection with the man I most admired—I’ve changed my view on grief. The DSM-V outlines “complicated grief” and “prolonged grief disorder.” I originally saw my own grief in the same way—a disorder to be treated. But as I tried to get rid of it by pushing thoughts of my brother out of my life with responsibilities and busyness, I found that the pain only increased. I discovered that grief is the link to my brother; it is the oasis in the desert of pain: though the air is parched and the land blasted, it gives me the connection that I so deeply needed. Instead of seeing grief as simply the experience of loss, I now see it as love that has nowhere else to go. With Svend Brinkmann, I view it as a universal, foundational emotion experienced by all, regardless of culture, class, or ethnicity. It binds us together as a unifying experience of love’s encounter with death (Brinkmann 2020). Strangely, grief has become a sweet sorrow. When I experience it, I cry bitterly, but I also remember my brother. I feel him, as if he is by me. And while the distance of death highlights the pain of his absence, the vivid memory of his laugh, his voice, or his brilliant mind links me to him meaningfully.
Under this new perspective, mindfulness of our pain is not just a coping mechanism. It is the connection we maintain with our lost loved one. In one fascinating study, researchers instructed their experimental group to read a brief passage explaining that over time, our loved ones teach us important lessons about life and ourselves that we keep with us for ever. Following this, they wrote about what they learned from their lost loved one. The control group simply wrote about their morning routine. The experimental group experienced significant increases in positive affect and reduction in negative symptoms associated with grief (Basic and Bryant 2025). Indeed, considering the meaningful aspect of our relational bonds with the deceased brings meaning into our own lives and helps us realize that they live on in us.
We know through extensive research that mindfulness-based interventions can be effective for alleviating grief symptoms (Sun et al., 2025), but in those practices, we should always seek the deeper meaning and maintain our continuing bonds with our loved ones.
I won’t see my brother again for as long as I live, but I will feel him. I will feel him in the gentle breeze on the peak of a mountain I’ve just scaled. I’ll feel him in the breath after reading a beautiful poem. I will feel him pushing me forward to my goals. I’ll feel him each time I try to do the right thing. I’m glad for my cosmic cheerleader. I’m thankful that I have the evidence that I loved him in every tear I shed.
Above all, I’m grateful for my grief because through it I still have my brother.
“There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within the whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.”