Warmongers need to wake to pain of grief.(Main)

Byline: Andrew Greeley

A clergy person often encounters paralyzing grief. Death is a savage blow to a family, especially to the closest relative of the victim, spouse, parent, child, sibling - usually in that order. Joan Didion in her book "The Year of Magical Thinking" describes her grief after the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne with searing honesty. She depicts the denial, the anger, the guilt, the refusal to let go, the paralyzing vortex of emotions which is often triggered by a single memory, the magical thinking that somehow he is going to come back.

At the end of the book, she suggests that maybe she will shortly pass beyond grief to mourning, …