Freud said that mourning is a “great riddle,” and its greatness partially consists in its not being the kind of riddle that gets solved. Mourning, he says, is “one of those phenomena which cannot themselves be explained but to which other obscurities can be traced back.” In essence, mourning is one of the ways we exercise our capacity for love. We get attached to people and ideals, thoughts and projects that are themselves vulnerable. And we respond to that vulnerability by becoming active ourselves in making sense of what it all meant or will continue to mean.

Jonathan Lear