Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm reading a book, "The Anatomy of Grief" that talks about the evolution of the human brain, and the signs of grief we see in animals and reptiles and birds. I know, no one but me would be reading this, except maybe my dear deceased Zen teacher Yvonne Rand. I find it comforting to read about what I am experiencing and what others have in the past or now. I'm in an altered state, which has no name or description. Yet grief is universal and no one escapes it. In the part I was reading this morning, the author describes what happens when the death is anticipated, as it was with my daughter, in her case from the beginning diagnosis but intensifying when the cancer returned, and stunning us when there was no treatment left and only the choice of how and when to die. How complicated it is when you are praying and bargaining to be the lucky one, the exception, to miraculously survive, as my own mother did when she was 34 and was the first person with her kind of brain tumor to live. I'm so proud my daughter lived vibrantly and fully, while preparing her daughter and the rest of us for the fate we could not bear to contemplate. This book is helping me name my experience as much as it can be, since there are no words for the loss of a child, no matter what her age.