Grief and Gratefulness

Welcome! If you’ve studied U.S. history, perhaps you remember Comstock’s lode, a rich vein of gold discovered in 1859 in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Though prospectors flocked to the site, they often complained about heavy blue sand that clogged their mining machinery and confounded their digging. It wasn’t until some enterprising Mexican miners hauled a bag of the “danged blue stuff” to an expert in California that the truth came out: The sand was laden with silver!

If joy is gold, grief is silver. But we tend to be as unaware of the value of our “blues” as the 19th-century prospectors were about the value of blue sand. When we’re struck by grief, is the main point to “beat” this mood that seems to be clogging the works so that we can get back to a happy, productive life? Maybe sometimes. But always we can find a profound source of gratefulness right within grief itself.