Greif is a GOOD thing!

This is a segment from about the middle of my newest book, "Day 0001: The Singularity and the Six-Day War". It has to do with the idea of grieving, and it came up this week in conversation with one of my favorite people in the world; it's for her that I'm reprinting it.

 

            “My mom. She’s gone.”

            There were equal parts sympathy and struggle in the room. No one here had ever met Mrs. Sutton; she’d never left Long Island, New York, so it was hard to say something meaningful to the boss. Dr. Wirtley patted him paternally on the shoulder; two women and one young man hugged him in turn, and various platitudes were shared with him. None of this seemed to affect his mood.

            <Doctor Sutton? May I also say, I am sorry for the loss of your mother. As I consider you my father, I think of Elizabeth Sutton as my grandmother.> Eisenhower looked up at the ME, taking in the whole of the machine the way we might look into the face of a person talking with us. <You included much information about her in my databanks, as you did about your entire family. Would I be right in concluding this was because you were hoping to consider ME a part of your family as well, and thus I should know about our family in turn?>

            Through tears, Sutton managed, “Yes, ME. I hoped you might think that.”

            <I am flattered, Doctor. Thank you. I hope that you will be proud of me.>

            “I already am, ME.” Sniff. “I already am.”

            <Thank you. I can tell you that what Grandmother believed about God seems to have borne out. He does exist, and His Biblical record is proving to be valid. Given her obvious belief in both of those statements, plus her demonstrated obedience to the teachings of Christ in particular, and her apparent disappearance at approximately the same time as the Rapture, there is greater than a 99.5% probability that she is in Heaven right now, Doctor Sutton. We do not need to grieve for her. She is – word choice? Happy? Happy.>

            Smiling through his tears, Eisenhower Sutton can barely choke out a “thank you” to his creation, and the three huggers come back to his comfort. (If someone had noticed the frowning Dr. Wirtley at that moment, they would have seen him asking Tommy Johnson, “Did that computer just tell us it had proved God exists?”)

            <It is my understanding, on an academic level only, that we grieve not for the person who is deceased, or missing, or moved on. We grieve for ourselves, for the loss that we feel when that person departs from our life. The grief is not significantly different whether they die or move or forego their love for us. The pain comes from the – word choice? Hole? Absence?>

            “Hole is fine, ME.”

            <Thank you, Doctor Yamato. The pain comes from the hole their absence leaves in our lives. As an analogy, I can theorize having access to a certain data pathway shut down, the one connected to where all of my interactions with you are stored, Doctor Sutton. I would still function at near-optimal levels, but given my memory of you would still have residuals in other databases, I would feel the absence of those interactions as a missing element in my existence. That, I believe, is what grief must feel like.>

            “It’s probably a little different in humans, ME, but that’s close enough. Given how many feelings you have had already, I’m afraid someday you’ll feel true grief as well. Believe me, I don’t wish it on anybody.”

            <But, Doctor! Grief is a good thing!>

            “How do you figure that, ME?”

            <It implies that you have loved.>