Dear Maggie,
There’s been a lot of death in my family over the past few years. Both my parents, an uncle, and now a young cousin who died of complications after a minor surgery. I’m not dealing well with it all. I’m sad all the time. I don’t want to do anything fun. It’s affecting my marriage, and I’m messing up at my job. It just seems so unfair that so much death should come to one family like this. Do you think we could be under some kind of bad luck curse or something?
Signed,
Grieving

Dear Grieving,
Things often seem unfair, but it’s actually not possible for them to be. We’re all here for as long as we intended to be when we came into this life. We’re all experiencing exactly the things that our thoughts and our focus create for us. Death is the most fair thing of all. We all die. Every single one of us. To say it’s unfair for so much death to visit one family seems to suggest that some families won’t have any at all, and that’s just not so. Everyone dies. Everyone. And I can tell you, whether it’s spread out over a number of decades or hitting you all in one year, it still hurts to lose those you love.
The thing to remember, though, is that their journey is not yours. You cannot know why someone’s walk through this life ended at the age that it did. You can’t know the myriad thoughts and feelings that created their experience and caused it to unfold as it did.
What you can know is that it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. It’s done, and they’ve moved on into a state of bliss, peace and ultimate understanding that we can’t even begin to imagine. For you to fill your own experience with sadness and grief, can only bring you more sadness and grief. That’s why it seems like a curse. Your focus on your pain is just bringing more pain. It snowballs, and it can seem like a curse. But feeling this way is not doing anyone any good. It’s doing harm. You’ve made a choice to mire yourself in feeling bad. You need to make a new choice, to feel good again and to let go of this.
Grieving for those we loved and lost is a natural thing, but there does come a point where you have to decide to get back to living your life again, and let the grief go. Some people need professional help to get started. Most just need to stop focusing on the loss and start looking at all the good things going on around them. Start participating in life again. Set goals, and work toward them. Do things that bring you joy and don’t feel guilty for being happy. You’re supposed to be happy. Life is supposed to be good.
Good luck with it!
Maggie