In Chapter 18, of Entering Eternity with Ease, I talked about the new age interpretation of St. Augustine’s famous prayer: “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts will never rest until they rest in thee.” For 1600 years, millions of Christians have taken this prayer as an infallible formula for peace of heart in both time and eternity. But the problem is, today in the 21^st Century, our ideas about who this God is who has made us for himself, have changed so radically, that we are at a loss to understand what that prayer concretely means today. Who IS this God who made us? WHAT is this God, and HOW did he make us?  

            St. Augustine spent the first 30 years of his life as a Manichean. This was a sect that believed that there were two Gods:  The spiritual God of goodness, and the material God of badness, or evil. Augustine had inherited the Greek philosophers’ disagreements over matter and form. Many believed that only matter existed, while many believed that only form existed. By form, the Greeks meant the concept, or idea, of a thing. The materialists thought that only matter existed, and contained its own form as part of its physical existence. The idealists, especially the strict followers of Plato, did not believe in the physical existence of matter. They believed that everything existed only in the mind as an idea, a concept, a form. The Christian Scientists who follow Mary Baker Eddy are idealist, although why they call themselves scientists is lost on me, because scientists are the first ones to accept the reality of matter as opposed to idea.

            Now in Augustine’s day, the Manicheans tried to solve the problem of matter and form by postulating two Gods: the material God and the spiritual God. Augustine seems to have finally settled on the spiritual God, after, of course, “sewing his wild oats,” by having a child out of wedlock with a concubine. He named the child “Deodatus”, that is, “given by God.”  Guess which God he was named after?  Finally, Augustine became a Christian, and embraced, presumably, the spiritual God. Although he spent a couple of years praying: “God, make me pure, but not yet.” Eventually, Augustine seems to have totally rejected the material God, and wholly embraced the spiritual God, when he made his famous quote that God had created us with an emptiness that only He could fill. 

            As the French standard of the seventies sang: “What now my love, now that it’s over. How can I live for another day? “Yes, that infinite emptiness is inside of each of us, and it can only be filled by some infinitely higher power.  Where is that God of infinite fulfillment today in this screwed up century? The answer to these questions is in Chapter 11 under “The Experience of Limitless Belonging.” That is where I draw upon some of the greatest meditation/mindfulness teachers of today.

            I sense that many in America today are becoming overwhelmed by the infections and deaths that keep rising every day, along with the stalled economy which is hurting the most vulnerable in our society the most. Not to mention millions of parents and grandparents who are frightened to death of the loss of a successful continuing education for their children. 

            Thus we are slipping into the longest and hardest of the five stages of mourning: depression. Many do not seem to realize that depression is a serious disease.  It is not just a mental illness, but is what we call psychosomatic, that is, it involves both the psych and the body. Depression can lead to death or disability. This is the real danger of the perfect storm we find ourselves in today. As a psychotherapist for 49 years, I have to say that I have never seen anyone come out of depression by using anti-depressant drugs. What I have seen, however, is people coming out of depression through  mindfulness and meditation. It is up to each of us.

The Poet Marianne Moore on Life and Eternity

My dear friend, Patricia Willis, was Director of the Marianne Moore  Library at Yale University, and sent me this poem by Moore to add to the collection of great poets on this ultimate of subjects.

“Moore didn’t much address life/death/eternity except when she wrote about war. The following is a poem written during World War II. She was far from a pacifist; her brother, John Warner Moore, was a Presbyterian Navy chaplain stationed at Pearl Harbor just before the destruction there and then assigned as Pacific Fleet Chaplain, serving aboard Admiral Nimitz ship. So, this is not what you were looking for but I thought I’d send it anyway.”

In Distrust of Merits

Strengthened to live, strengthened to die for

medals and positioned victories?

They’re fighting, fighting the blind

man who thinks he sees,—

who cannot see that the enslaver is

enslaved; the hater, harmed. O shining O

firm star, O tumultuous

ocean lashed till small things go

as they will, the mountainous

wave makes us who look, know

depth. Lost at sea before they fought! O

star of David, star of Bethlehem,

O black imperial lion

of the Lord-emblem

of a risen world—be joined at last, be

joined. There is hate’s crown beneath which all is

death; there’s love’s without which none

is king; the blessed deeds bless

the halo. As contagion

of sickness makes sickness,

contagion of trust can make trust. They’re

fighting in deserts and caves, one by

one, in battalions and squadrons;

they’re fighting that I

may yet recover from the disease, My

Self; some have it lightly; some will die. ‘Man’s

wolf to man’ and we devour

ourselves. The enemy could not

have made a greater breach in our

defenses. One pilot-

ing a blind man can escape him, but

Job disenheartened by false comfort knew

that nothing can be so defeating

as a blind man who

can see. O alive who are dead, who are

proud not to see, O small dust of the earth

that walks so arrogantly,

trust begets power and faith is

an affectionate thing. We

vow, we make this promise

to the fighting—it’s a promise—’We’ll

never hate black, white, red, yellow, Jew,

Gentile, Untouchable.’ We are

not competent to

make our vows. With set jaw they are fighting,

fighting, fighting,—some we love whom we know,

some we love but know not—that

hearts may feel and not be numb.

It cures me; or I am what

I can’t believe in? Some

in snow, some on crags, some in quicksands,

little by little, much by much, they

are fighting fighting that where

there was death there may

be life. ‘When a man is prey to anger,

he is moved by outside things; when he holds

his ground in patience patience

patience, that is action or

beauty,’ the soldier’s defense

and hardest armor for

the fight. The world’s an orphans’ home. Shall

we never have peace without sorrow?

without pleas of the dying for

help that won’t come? O

quiet form upon the dust, I cannot

look and yet I must. If these great patient

dyings-all these agonies

and wound bearings and bloodshed—

can teach us how to live, these

dyings were not wasted.

Hate-hardened heart, O heart of iron

iron is iron till it is rust.

There never was a war that was

not inward; I must

fight till I have conquered in myself what

causes war, but I would not believe it.

I inwardly did nothing.

O Iscariot-like crime!

Beauty is everlasting

and dust is for a time.

For the past two years, one of my friends, Charlie Wilkinson, of Evanston, IL, has suffered the excruciating pain of his wife of 50 years, slowly slipping away into dementia. On this Mother’s Day, he and his children and grandchildren are facing the gut-wrenching pain of wishing a Happy Mother’s Day to a beautiful mother/grandmother who no longer recognizes them.

Charlie long ago introduced us to John O’Donohue, an Irish poet, who wrote “Anam Cara” which is Gaelic for “dear soul.” Charlie himself is a poet and a dear soul to all of us, and in his own inimitable voice he sends out a poem of grief and lament about Kathy, dear soul, his wife.

Dementia:

These Long, Sad Days

These long, sad days twist through the heart of me,

Endless, they seem, even early on.

My breathing measures minutes as I see

The embers of a mind that fade to gone.

Her eyes once bright with life are dull as mist,

Her memories elusive like her smile,

Her mouth a line of lips so often kissed

Holds tight to feelings, all the while

She sits in silence through each day

Reading, it seems; it’s difficult to know;

Her thoughts all inward and so far away

Unreachable, like stars that lost their glow.

There must be meaning somewhere in her dying.

But even while believing that, I’m still left crying.

cw/2021

Charlie’s favorite poet John O’Donohue once said that “poetry is a language against which there is no defense.” That is why my response may be a plea against which I have no defense:

Charlie, Your ‘cris de coeur’ is echoing in our hearts.

It is the language of languishing.

It is about birth and death

About knowing and not knowing

About remembering and forgetting

About Resurrection and Eternal Life

About always was, and forever will be.

O my God, our prayer can only be today

‘the lips we so often kissed in song,

We will forever kiss in silence.’

This Mother’s Day we kiss in silence the lips of mothers gone in dementia, and all mothers gone for many years into that silence of Eternal Life. May all of us rest in peace. Amen

Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021

This is the season of death and resurrection.

Wednesday, the man next door killed himself. His wife was taking a shower, so he took an old rifle his grandfather from Asturias, Spain had left him, went out into the driveway and shot himself.

Nine months ago, when I finished “Entering Eternity With Ease,” I brought a copy next door and we sat down for an hour’s conversation with husband and wife. I tried to explain how suicide had gone up exponentially because people were severely depressed by the covid lockdown, and I wrote the book to console both victims and survivors that life is meant to be joy-filled, and not anxious and depressive. I emphasized Kubler-Ross’s stages of dying and how we had to go through depression to finally accept death, and we could end up with joy.

Then the man next door immediately blurted out, “I often want to kill myself.” When I asked him why he said that life was too painful for him. I already knew that he had a severe heart condition, and was depressed by the covid lockdown which was now about five months into our community life. I have no idea if he ever read it, but Wednesday when his wife came stumbling into our house screaming that he killed himself, and blood was all over him, she kept repeating, “He promised me that he would not kill himself, and he waited till I was in the shower to go out and do it.”

To be or not to be, that is the question. To live or to die, that is also the question. Death or resurrection, that is the question. Or is it?

To be AND not to be- maybe that’s the question. To live AND to die-could that be the question? To die and also to rise from the dead, maybe that’s an answer.

Evolution tells us that every atom in our body was born 13 billion years ago in the big bang. Biology tells us that every atom in our body is replaced by other atoms at least once a hear. Science also tells us that all the atoms are eternal and go on forever throughout the universe. 13 billion years of time up till now are but a drop in the ocean of eternity/forever.

That is why I believe in a God, a higher power, who is the Soul of this mystery. As a young man, I used to joke that to believe in God is to believe that there is someone out there who isn’t stupid. (That is why I loved it when President Obama said that international relations consist in not doing anything stupid. Now that is Godlike!)

This super-intelligent ISNESS,  this infinite, transcendent power which energizes the universe is symbolized by Jesus on the Cross. The Crucifixion symbolizes for me the vertical and the horizontal, the temporal and the eternal, the impermanent and the permanent, both death and resurrection at the same time.

Good Friday was not called Bad Friday by the first followers of Jesus because somehow they intuited that out of evil comes good, out of death comes eternal life. To die is horrible. To die is unjust. To die is not right. To die is hopeless, heartless, loveless. But for Jesus and his followers, death was the door to divinity. No matter what you may believe about the true nature of Jesus, you have to admit that Jesus is the most admired person in the history of the planet, despite what the Beatles said about themselves being more famous than Jesus. (Hopefully, in jest.)

The Christ of the Resurrection has been called by Father Richard Rohr “The Universal Christ” with the subtitle: “Another Name for Everything.” The universe, according to Rohr is a “Christ-Soaked Universe.” I would say that because of the Risen Christ, every atom in the universe is finally tinged with divinity. So, we have all been graced as infinity incarnate as symbolized by Christ.

This is also true of the man next door, who in despair could no longer bear the existential pain of his humanness. Now he is alive in eternal reality.  Amen

There Is No Self – Nothingness Becomes Wholeness

“Buddha is right – there is no self – but he is not helping people, poor people, because they cannot figure out all the implications of the statement.

“I say to you: You don’t have a self because you are part of a great self, the whole. You cannot have any separate, private, self of your own. This takes away the negativity, and this does not give you the positive desire for becoming more and more egoistic. It avoids both the extremes and finds a new approach: The universe is, I am not. And whatever happens and appears to be in me, as me, is simply universal.” Osho

The Way of Unknowing

Descriptions of the “dark night of the soul” from the Spanish mystic John of the Cross (1542–1591) have become the marker by which many Christians measure their own experience of unknowing. He fits an entire life spent exploring God’s mystery into memorable poetry, and even dares to call unknowing “an ecstasy”! Here are several stanzas from his poem “Stanzas Concerning an Ecstasy Experienced in High Contemplation”:

1. I entered into unknowing, Yet when I saw myself there

Without knowing where I was. I understood great things;

I shall not say what I felt,  For I remained in unknowing

Transcending all knowledge.

4. He who truly arrives there,  Cuts free from himself;

All that he knew before,  Now seems worthless,

And his knowledge so , that he is left in unknowing

Transcending all knowledge.

6. The knowledge in unknowing,  Is so overwhelming

That wise men disputing,  Can never overthrow it,

For their knowledge does not reach To the understanding of not-

understanding,

Transcending all knowledge. [1] 

John’s poetry is exquisite in its humility—knowing that he does not know, can never know, and doesn’t even need to know! He goes so far as to call this dark night “a work of His mercy, / To leave one without understanding.” [2] John’s teaching contains paradoxes that are difficult to absorb, but modern readers have the good fortune of many good translations, including that of Mirabai Starr. Like the other friends whose work I have shared this week, Mirabai knows the via negativa, the way of unknowing, personally and intimately, and describes what happens between the soul and God in the “dark night:”

The soul in the dark night cannot, by definition, understand what is happening to her. Accustomed to feeling and conceiving of the Beloved in her own way, she does not realize that the darkness is a blessing. She perceives God’s gentle touch as an unbearable burden. She feels miserable and unworthy, convinced that God has abandoned her, afraid she may herself be turning against him. In her despair, the soul does not recognize that God is teaching her in a secret way now, a way with which the faculties of sense and reason cannot interfere.

At the same time that the soul in the night of spirit becomes paralyzed in spiritual practice, her love-longing for God begins to intensify. In the stillness left behind by its broken-open senses and intellect, a quality of abundance starts to grow inside the emptied soul. It turns out that the Beloved is longing for union with the lover as fervently as she has been yearning for him. . . . God will whisper to the soul in the depth of darkness and guide it through the wilderness of the Unknown until it is annihilated in the flames of perfect love [3]

[1] John of the Cross, “Stanzas Concerning an Ecstasy Experienced in High Contemplation,” The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Institute of Carmelite Studies: 1979), 718–719.

[2] John of the Cross, Collected Works, 719.

[3] Mirabai Starr, introduction to Dark Night of the Soul, by John of the Cross, trans. Mirabai Starr (Riverhead Books: 2002), 20. [Richard Rohr: The best translation in my opinion.]

Last Sunday the NY Times published an article by Pope Francis which is Linked below:

It is so good that I would like to summarize the high points here. Pope Francis points out that the way we are responding to the Corona Pandemic reveals what is in our hearts. He says:

“In this past year of change, my mind and heart have overflowed with people. People I think of and pray for, and sometimes cry with, people with names and faces, people who died without saying goodbye to those they loved, families in difficulty, even going hungry, because there’s no work. 

“These are moments in life that can be ripe for change and conversion. Each of us has had our own “stoppage,” or if we haven’t yet, we will someday: illness, the failure of a marriage or a business, some great disappointment or betrayal. As in the Covid-19 lockdown, those moments generate a tension, a crisis that reveals what is in our hearts.”

“What is revealed is what needs to change: our lack of internal freedom, the idols we have been serving, the ideologies we have tried to live by, the relationships we have neglected.” 

Francis goes on to talk about the illness that almost killed him when he was 21, and they had to remove part of his lung. He named too nuns, now deceased, who saved his life by nursing that went beyond what the doctors could do for him.

Francis mentioned all the doctors, nurses, and other health care workers who gave their lives to treat the sick. ” their choice testified to a belief: that it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call.”  ” They are the saints next door, who have awakened something important in our hearts.”  ” They are the antibodies to the virus of indifference. They remind us that our lives are a gift and we grow by giving of ourselves, not preserving ourselves but losing ourselves in service.”

It is impossible for me to adequately summarize Pope Francis’s beautiful words. They are so rich, and full of spiritual meditation that you have to read them yourself. I’ll just close with the last paragraph of Pope Francis:

“To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.”

As they say in Italian: “Cosi sia,” Let it be. Amen.

Sorry, but this is Friday the Thirteenth, and the world faces disaster after disaster, with no exit in sight. Jean Paul Sartre, the Nihilist philosopher, wrote a play called “No Exit”,   in which he portrays three people walled in a room forever and hating each other. Sartre’s main theory was that people are hell, when they are unable to love each other. I find a remarkable parallel in the disastrous condition of our planet today

First of all, our climate is collapsing, mostly due to the excessive use of fossil fuels, causing a greenhouse effect. It seems impossible to stop this abuse because we humans fail to love each other and our mother earth, enough to change our habits of living that are abusing the planet. We don’t love our bodies and we don’t love our mother earth.

Secondly, the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic is daily increasing in its victims exponentially mostly because we do not love each other enough to curtail our own freedom to do what we want in order to safeguard others who need us to protect them.

Thirdly, we in the United States do not love each other enough to create a society that cares for the least among us.

Fourthly, the polarization between the right and the left, between the rich and poor, between the lighter skinned and the darker skinned, between the newer immigrants and the older immigrants, between the “educated elite” and the less educated. The list goes on and on ad nauseum, but always the same cause: we do not love each other enough, we do not understand that we are all equal as human beings, and we cannot have a unity based on truth without love, or love without that truth.

I am 91 years old. How do I face this abundance of disaster? All my life, I have been optimistic. My favorite poem was “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” Not any more. I believe in a different God now: a God who is vulnerable. What do I mean by a vulnerable God? A God who is organically connected to material reality, a God who is the soul of the body which is the universe. This is the God    in whom “we live, and move, and have our being.” This is the unknown God that Paul spoke of to the Greek philosophers. This unknown God is the One who has become incarnate in US.

God is vulnerable in this planet which is His/Her own body, and in each of us in whom He/She lives. Vulnerability is not something to feel good about. It is something to feel bad about, sad about. We have to learn how to be comfortable with this discomfort. And this discomfort will lead to compassion, and compassion will lead to love. And then finally, on this planet, in this country, the power of love will overcome the love of power. God help us. Enjoy the pain.

11:30 AM, Saturday, November 7, 2020, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were proclaimed President and Vice-President elect of the United States of America. This election was called a referendum on Donald Trump. Actually, it was a referendum on the values espoused by the Trump administration and its followers vs the values of center left Americans. Even though the center left has won this referendum , we still have to live on this continent with 74 million neighbors who value the love of living neighbors over the love of not yet born fetuses, and 71 million neighbors who value love of the unborn above love of the already born. It is an excruciating dilemma. We still have 71 million neighbors who value owning a gun to defend oneself and one’s family in this jungle of America, and 74 million who refuse to believe that we live in a jungle. We still have 71 million Americans who refuse to wear a mask because it impinges on their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, while 74 million of us are afraid that their neighbors’ freedom not to wear a mask may kill them. So far 235,000 of us have been killed. We still have 71 million neighbors who want a closed wall, while we have 74 million neighbors, all from refugee ancestors, who want a legal path to citizenship for those who humbly beg for assistance.

Last Sunday, Paul Krugman wrote in the NYTimes: “But even with the best will in the world this egg (referring to the MAGA America first and last doctrine) can’t be unscrambled. No matter how good a global citizen America becomes in the next few years, everyone will remember that we are a country that elected someone like Donald Trump, and could do it again. It will take decades, if not generations to regain the lost trust.”

In the same issue of the NYTimes, Marcel Dzarma writes about “When the American Dream Died for Me.” She quotes a dozen or so disillusioned Americans, among whom, one wrote: The American Dream died for me when I realized just how many of my fellow Americans valued selfishness over community, power over justice, prejudice over fairness, greed over generosity, demagogy over science.”

Now, most of the 71 million who voted for Trump will never admit that they consciously subscribe to Trump’s values. But these same people have told us for four years, “Don’t listen to what Trump SAYS, just watch what he DOES.” That is what I am saying here. Trump DOES selfishness, Trump DOES power, Trump DOES prejudice, Trump DOES greed, Trump DOES demagogy. These are the true values that the 71 million who voted for him are espousing by the ACT of voting for Trump.

I now invite the 71 million followers of what Trump DOES, to point out where my values are wrong. If we can begin to talk about these values with respect for each other, then maybe we can begin to live like family on this continent.

See you at virtual Thanksgiving. We are being asked to love one another. This is the hardest thing we have ever been asked to do. Let’s pray Biden/Harris can pull it off.

For about twenty years, Donald Trump has made up his own reality, his own truth, and simply dismissed real truth as “fake news.” But there is something sacred about truth. Truth is ultimate reality, and ultimate truth is synonymous with God, whatever we humans, through the centuries have conceived God to be. Atheists will say there is no God, but they are not talking about ultimate reality, they are talking about the myriad versions of God that they cannot accept. But everybody believes in ultimate reality, even though most of us have no idea what it is. Ultimate reality is the truth.

              Death is part of this ultimate reality. 207, 000 deaths from Covid-19 is the truth. President Trump tried to deny this truth. He tried to deny the truth that a microbe is stronger than he is, that this hidden micro-horror can kill hundreds of thousands of us, even millions of us, if we don’t acknowledge the truth of its hidden power, of its invisible poisonous destructive venom .  When you deny truth, then truth denies you. This is what is happening to President Trump. The Greeks had a word for “thinking you are a god,” it is “ hubris.”  When you combine narcissism with hubris, you bring forth a sociopath.

              For those of us who still pray:  Pray for President Trump.  Amen

Last Sunday, there was an article in the New York Times which stated that one out of four Americans are suffering from suicidal thoughts. As a psychotherapist working in New York for 30 years, I could not believe that the number could possibly be that high. But then I mentioned it to a neighbor who confessed that he had not even told it to his wife, but he was feeling like killing himself. And then the wife confessed that she, too, was having suicidal thoughts. Now I am beginning to believe that one in four may be very close to the truth. After 8 months of shutdown, social distancing, and bombardment with bad news, maybe as many as 80 millions of us (one in four) ARE beginning to lose our grip on “stayin’ alive” as the song says. We hear 24/7 of deaths (230,000 from covid-19), of fires, floods, wind storms, cultural wars, political abysses, and weird conspiracy theories. So many are suffering from grief and loss, and worried about the present and future of our children, no wonder so many are confessing a loss of the natural will to live that we are all born with.

I enclose here a related article on the side effects of grief and loss from the Harvard Health Letter which I subscribe to:

The Side Effects of Grief and Loss

Heidi Godman, Executive Editor, Harvard Health Letter

Nothing quite prepares you for the heartache of profound loss. It settles in like a gloomy thrum — sometimes louder, sometimes softer — with a volume switch you can’t entirely shut off.

For me, that heartbreak arrived this past October, when my mother died after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and disability. Now, for the first time in my life, I’m experiencing real grief. As a health reporter, I know this emotional experience comes with the risk for physical side effects. “Most of these side effects are the result of emotional distress responses,” explains Dr. Maureen Malin, a geriatric psychiatrist with Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital.

Whether you’re grieving the loss of a loved one, like I am, or the loss of a job, a home, or a beloved pet, it’s important to understand how the process puts your health in jeopardy.

Stress and grief

Grieving takes a toll on the body in the form of stress. “That affects the whole body and all organ systems, and especially the immune system,” Dr. Malin says. Evidence suggests that immune cell function falls and inflammatory responses rise in people who are grieving. That may be why people often get sick more often and use more health care resources during this period.

But why is stress so hard on us? It’s because the body unleashes a flood of stress hormones that can make many existing conditions worse, such as heart failure or diabetes, or lead to new conditions, such as high blood pressure or heartburn. Stress can also cause insomnia and changes in appetite.

Extreme stress, the kind experienced after the loss of a loved one, is associated with changes in heart muscle cells or coronary blood vessels (or both) that prevent the left ventricle from contracting effectively. It’s a condition called stress-induced cardiomyopathy, or broken-heart syndrome. The symptoms are similar to those of a heart attack: chest pain and shortness of breath.

Depression and grief

Intense feelings of sadness are normal when we’re grieving. But some people become depressed. Up to 50% of widows and widowers have depression symptoms during the first few months after a spouse’s death. (By the one-year mark, it’s down to 10%). Depression symptoms include:

extreme hopelessness
insomnia
loss of appetite
suicidal thoughts
persistent feelings of worthlessness
marked mental and physical sluggishness.
Dr. Malin says people who are depressed often isolate themselves and withdraw from social connections, and they often stop taking care of themselves properly. “You’re not as interested in life. You fall down on the job, miss doctor appointments, stop exercising, stop eating properly. All of these things put your health at risk,” she explains.

Picking up the pieces

It may seem impossible to think about maintaining good health when it’s difficult to simply get through each day. But Dr. Malin says it’s okay to just go through the motions at first (fake it until you make it).

That may mean walking for five minutes every day, and then gradually increasing the amount of time you walk.

And even if you don’t feel like eating, go ahead and eat three healthy meals per day anyway. Your body needs calories to function, even if you’re not hungry. Eating too little may add to fatigue.

And don’t forget about social connections, which are crucial to good health. Stay in touch with friends and loved ones. Try to get out of your house and spend time with others, even if it’s to talk about your grief.

One step at a time (and your doctor can help)

A good way to stay on top of your health when you’re grieving: “See your doctor, especially if symptoms worsen, and get back to a healthy routine as soon as possible,” Dr. Malin suggests. For a while, at least, you can simply follow your doctor’s instructions to maintain health, putting one foot in front of the other until you develop your own routine.

In time — and there is no standard period of grief for anyone — the sun will come out again, and you’ll feel a little stronger emotionally and physically each day. I’m counting on this. But we all need a foundation of good health in order to get there. Let’s give ourselves that advantage. Our loved ones would want that for us.