What May Come from the Grief of Illness

Review of Anya Silver, From Nothing. These days there seems to be a greater sense that grief, whether experienced for the loss of an intimate or for the loss of one’s own vitality, is a private affair that no one but those directly affected can know. Pain and suffering reduce the distance that separates human beings from each other, but they just as often reinforce our differences, pushing the individual toward isolation. What grief means, and where one stands in relation to the concentric circles that ripple outward from the ache of a particular loss, is fraught with uncertainty. We are too quick to console, or perhaps we say the wrong thing. When we are the ones in pain and the roles are reversed, we can be too quick to reject consolation. It is ludicrous to hear that our suffering is somehow the result of God’s plan. No wonder so many readers seek the counsel of the afflicted in these matters.