My mother is a preschool teacher, a very wonderful one at that. Recently, one of her children lost her mother to cancer, and it was a very hard year. It was one of those things that made staying positive very difficult, primarily because she had to look into the faces of these children and answer questions she wished they had more years until they had to think of. That same year my mother lost her father, my grandfather.

I remember we were in the car, probably on some errand, and she was turning right at an intersection. She told me something one of the mothers had said, and I remembered that at first it made me really angry. The mother had said that she was lucky, that she shouldn't be this upset because she had so many years with her grandfather while some of the children had already lost theirs. I remember feeling angry that someone had invalidated my mother's pain, had told her she was feeling too much and had dared to say how much she was allowed to feel, like grieving could be followed in a rule book because everybody behaved the same way. So at first I was angry, because how dare she? Of course it was wonderful my mother got to spend so many years with her father, and I got to experience having a grandfather, but that it no way makes it any easier to lose him. And pain isn't a competition, nobody really wants to win that gold medal. Of course, if she could choose she would rather be happy--but she wasn't.

I was angry for a second, and then I thought for a moment, and even now, months later, it's a thought that still sticks to me: someone had to tell that unnamed mother that same thing. In order for her to know that, and preach it to my mother, somebody had come to her in a time of vulnerability, and told her she was feeling too much, that her emotions were not valid, and that there was a right way to feel in these situations. Somebody had come to this mother at the right moment, because now she believes this to be true. The thought really made me sad, and really realize that ignorance, pain, all those toxic emotions stem from something. Someone else was destroyed in order for this seed to take place. It was a very sad thought.