GOOD GRIEF! It really is!

About 3 weeks ago, I was in a difficult situation, and I said to myself: "good grief!"  You know that expression that Lucy made famous in Peanuts?  Or at least, that's where I first saw it.  Anyway, the moment the thought came out, I countered it with - How did those two words ever get put together??  I mean, is grief ever good?  Is there a such thing as 'good' grief?  I thought about it a lot (I've already told you how obsessive I can be) but didn't come to any satisfying conclusions, except that perhaps, the effects of having gone through grief are ultimately good... but since I hadn't ever truly experienced it, I wasn't sure.  And that was the thing!  I hadn't experienced grief!  Surely after your husband dies, you go through grief, you say.  But no, I never did... until today.  And the most incredible thing about it is that GRIEF IS GOOD! Good doesn't even begin to describe what grief is.  Grief is the most eye-opening (literally, my eyes were wide-open, I went to look into them in the mirror and they were not only wide-open, they were CLEAN - TRANSPARENTLY GLOWINGLY CLEAN!) experience. I have to write about it, just to understand it myself, so bear with me.
This morning, I was putting on my socks.  Simple thing.  I had been slapping around in flip-flops from the time I woke up, but now I wanted to go outside and I thought, no, better put on tennies, which of course means socks too. 
A word about socks.  I love them!  I love white cotton crew socks.  I love the way I can just pull them up in one fluid movement and they cozily encase my feet and make me feel protected.  Anyway, I was sitting on the edge of my bed putting on my sock, and I drew up my heel to the edge of the bed in order to put the sock over my toes and do that exquisite one-movement pull-up.  But my foot slipped off so I quickly reached to pull up my leg to tuck it in closer to my body so it wouldn't slip off.  Now this is something I never do.  I never manually pull up my leg but today I did.  And the moment my fingers closed around the lower section of my leg, I had a sudden vision of Car, and even though they were my fingers I felt in them the strength of his.  And that's when it happened.  Grief came over me.  I started to gasp and sob, and all those things you can imagine one does in a moment of grief, and ten thousand thoughts - not even thoughts, just beginnings of thoughts overlapping in waves and karooming inside my brain - swept through me.  At first it was genuinely uncontrollable, but even as I realized what was happening, I started controlling it, and it went away, and I found myself closing my eyes and willing that grief to come back - because somehow, it was the most beautiful sensation, it was REAL - as real as he was when he was here!  That thought brought back the grief.  He was so real!  I thought about all the times I'd felt him grasp me - because he had such a grasp!!  It was second nature to him to grab my arm for instance when he wanted me to see/listen to/feel/experience something.  I once told him he didn't have to be so insistent.  But this morning, feeling that strength in that grasp made me realize how much REAL intention he conveyed each time.  And how often do we convey an intention so immediately, so completely?      
As for me, I usually prefer keeping my body to myself and connecting with others through ideas (as if we were partners in a dream world). But I always knew one of the things about him that made him so ideal for me was precisely because he could always physically pull me back before I got lost in abstraction!
So there I was, deep in my cleansing, insightful grief, and I turned around and looked out the door with my wide-open, clear-seeing eyes, and what did I see?  A cool, peaceful sunny morning - the kind of weather I love - picture-perfect.  The grieving was over.  I was back in reality, empty, light, ready to be filled with whatever the day had in store.  I went out of the house to take a walk. 
Good grief!  How Life does take one by surprise and turn the simplest of moments into a magnificent experience of self-discovery.