The little booklet Good Grief by Granger E. Westberg begins like this:
We spend a good portion of our lives working diligently to acquire those things that make life rich and meaningful—friends, a wife or husband, children, a home, a job, material comforts, money (let’s face it), and security. What happens to us when we lose any one of these persons or things which are so important to us?
Quite naturally we grieve over the loss of anything important. Sometimes if the loss is great, the very foundations of our life are shaken, and we are thrown into deep despair.