Grief is a selfish thing

Grief is a selfish thing

My dog recently died, he was my only real friend in the whole world, the only creature I legitimately trusted  wholeheartedly.   I  don’t mean that in any sense of hyperbole, or exaggeration he literally was not only my best friend, but my only friend.  The why of why I have no friends, I established a long time ago, its rather obviously a flaw into me, perhaps of courage, or of weirdness, but that flaw I already know is me.  But that is besides the point, the point is when I grieved I thought only of how much he meant to me, of how much I loved him, and I know it shouldn’t be so selfish but that is where my mind  was wandering. Wandering into how he meant to me, how much he loved me, really its all about me. It’s not about how my dog felt, it’s about I felt about my dog. Not a deep message, but it seems that grief is such selfish thing couched in me, me, me. It’s the feeling of loss from being separated from them, it’s the memories you treasure, the grief that you will no longer experience those memories any more.  It’s the graveyards, the cemeteries, and the rituals we make with death in general. Is the crying about those  we had lost, or about the vacuum left by the lost? If I was dead I would not care a whit about what happened to my body, but it is important to those who might grieve for me. Grief is for the living, it is the emotional goodbye,  a  goodbye that we always have trouble letting go of. All the rituals associated with death, are there not for those who died but for those who live, they are there to help us let go, at least theoretically. Letting go is always so hard, especially so if they were such a part of you; I have no real answers for the grief. It goes away when the memories die, when life covers it up with swamp of new experience; I  grieve, I feel sad because yes I am selfish, but also because in the moment  my dog mattered to me, even if  long down the road the emotions of sadness will fade.

I guess why I feel bad about it is the guilt that what I should be feeling should be more selfless, and less selfish.