Grief, Mourning and Loneliness

I like to share things I learn. I believe that, even though most people may not be interested in that particular thing, whatever it is, there is always someone out there in Readerville who may share the same interests as you, or be able to relate to something similar. The main reason I wanted so much to learn to speak Spanish was because I like to converse with people. I like to exchange ideas, and I couldn't do that with only a textbook knowledge of the language or what you might find in a conversation in a high school textbook. I went from learning to speak Spanish in Mexico when I was 16 after taking it three years in school, then became a Spanish teacher, a Head Start bilingual home visitor for a time and now I am tutoring my second young person from Mexico. This is really one of the favorite parts of my job, the other being co-teaching kindergarten music. Every day is different. Most days I go into his classroom and sit with him for a time, then accompany him to our desk downstairs where I sit in a secretary chair whose seat sinks down when I sit in it, and we work on something he's working on in class or we go through a workbook that goes with a book of vocabulary. Today, the class was working on choosing nouns, verbs and adjectives from a list of terms and writing them on the Promethean board. One of the words was "mourn." I became curious when Google Translate indicated that "to mourn" translated to "llorar," which is Spanish for "to cry." I wondered how the translation of "to mourn" was the same word as "to cry" in Spanish. The whole thing turns out to be a matter of usage. I thought at first it was because some words about grieving and mourning originate from Latin (for example, "lament"), while "grief" originates from the French and "mourn" has Old English and Proto-Germanic roots. But when I see that "We are here to mourn the loss of John" translates in Spanish using the word "llorar" for the word "to mourn," that clarifies the subject somewhat. Our local library has signs all over that say, "Stay Curious," and I am a great proponent of that. In education, we refer to that as being a "lifelong learner." I am all for that, and I hope you are too. Grief and mourning are, of course, universal experiences among all human beings throughout the world. We have so much to share that we never have to be alone, which is the general theme of a book I have called "Loneliness" by Clark E. Moustakas. The only available one on Thriftbooks costs $17.29, but the book seems to be available by other booksellers. It's worth owning if you can find an affordable copy. I'm not parting with mine. Here is a great quote from Moustakas about loneliness: "It may be an experience of exquisite pain, deep fear and terror, an utterly terrible experience, yet it brings into awareness new dimnensions of self, new beauty, new power for human compassion, and a reverence for the precious nature of each breathing moment." And finally, “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones” (Proverbs 17:22). So, I wish you a merry heart tonight, in Jesus’ name, Amen.