Gratitude and Grief

Both have been topics on my mind for today.  2 families that I know have been dealt this blow in the last few days.  But it has brought the topic to the forefront of my mind, as well as some old, long buried emotion.  My husbands cousin passed away this morning.  I did not know her well - as she was a little older than joseph, and he played more with the boys growing up, but I did have the chance to see her several times.  She reminded me of what my grandmother would often speak of - a Gracious Lady.  I wish I had the chance to get to know her better before she passed on.  Grief is an interesting animal.  Even with as little as I knew her, I feel it, but not for her.  I have no doubt that she currently with family and it will be but a blink of an eye, before the rest of her family are with her again.  But I feel for her parents, two people that I admire and look up to.  No parent should out live their child, as another good friend learned this afternoon, as she buried her infant daughter. Although, we know it isn't really loss, just a temporary situation, it still hurts - and I know that it is so much more for immediate family-than what Joseph and I feel.  We want to help, to alievate it somehow, and we know that we can't - all we can offer is love.  There is a poem -  a common one, but I have like regardless, and it is very descriptive.
by Henry Van Dyke - 1852 - 1933

I am standing by the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch
until at last she hangs like a peck of white cloud
just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes!
Gone where? Gone from my sight - that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the places of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
'There she goes! ' ,
there are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout :
'Here she comes!'

While I think that separation is hard on those who are left standing on the shore, we can find comfort in knowing that when its our turn, those that we have loved and missed, will be the ones to watch and say, "Here she comes"

So how does gratitude play into grief? At least for me, it reminds me of what I have lost, and yet what I have gained and been blessed with.  That my struggles are small, and that I've not been asked to do hard things yet.  It provides perspective, and a reminder as to what is honestly important - and that is family and faith.