Yesterday I talked about overcoming my defensiveness, because it is oppressive and debilitating. It keeps a contrived distance between you and life, between you and everything you want and need to feel safe.

Turns out grief is the key. The only authentic, meaningful way we are going to experience life is to spend it preparing for death. Our culture taught us to think that is obscene. That we deserve to be “happy” all the time. Suffering is optional. It isn’t.

There is a new shift in interior design language (remember, ultimately it will be the artists who save us) – which replaces the term “age in place” with “die in place.” The ultimate goal of all good design is not that you can age in your own home. It’s that you can die there.

We are going to have to include death and loss and grief in our common language. We are going to have to talk about it. Normalize the subject. Befriend that demon. It has to happen. Turns out, it’s the only dance in town. Step right up.

Only now, fast approaching 72, am I realizing that I have carried grief since early in childhood. There were many losses, and none of them were addressed, or “processed,” whatever that means. I acutely remember waking during the night as a child, maybe 6 or 7. I came down the stairs into the living room looking for help. I was afraid and sad. Mimi, my grandmother, was sitting on the sofa, and I ran to her and burst into tears. “What’s wrong, honey?” “I miss Blackie!” Blackie was my Cocker Spaniel who had simply disappeared one day. I was 5 or 6 when I named her, so, don’t judge.

Blackie and I had been sitting on the floor playing fetch. I was rolling the ball to her and teaching her to return it to me. She dropped it near my feet and it rolled under the sofa, and when I bent over to reach for it, she bit me on the face. I doubt she did it out of any malice. She was also reaching for the ball. I just got in the way. She was gone shortly after that. I can look back now, of course, and realize that my parents weren’t going to let that happen again, so she had to go. Where she went I will never know. I don’t remember the story I was told, but I was devastated. And it would never be spoken of again.

Neither would Mimi’s death years later. There was no funeral. Was she cremated? Is she buried somewhere? I’ll never know. The subject was forbidden. Certainly my dear Mother spent her lifetime grieving. Among so many losses, she lost her sister, her closest friend, in a car accident on my 23rd birthday. I never wanted to celebrate my birthday again, but my Mother wasn’t having it. She showed up wherever I was in my life, presents and cake in hand. By God, we were having a party. And Barb was never spoken of. She was my loss, too.

There are too many stories like that to tell. Just in my life alone. I’m sure there are in your life also. How did we get this so wrong? And we wonder why we’re a culture of addicts?!