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It is not just the result of the death of a loved one. There is grief of being ill, moving to a new locale or becoming unemployed. 

Grief is felt when something or someone is lost. It is felt when we are hospitalized and lose our self-image of invincibility. There is grief when the children leave home.

We can feel great loss when a friend moves away physically, leaves us emotionally, or when we sense we are not young anymore.

When someone has one of the “big” birthdays, people think it is funny to get black trappings and declare the person “over the hill.” Turning 40 or 50 or 60 means little. It is just another day. Yet we might imagine a change in ourselves or the loss of another decade.

Children feel angst mixed with joy moving into a new grade. They mourn when moving to a new house or town. These are all times of saying goodbye.

When a person reaches midlife, he or she has felt most kinds of grief. There comes a stage when you might start grieving over your own death. You can, as many do, just live vitally until you are no longer.

Some people are so afraid of feeling grief that they cannot let go of another person who is smothering them.

There is hardly a way to measure the power or effect of grief. Sometimes we are surprised by what brings on the sad, hollow, feeling.

This past week, a person that I truly admired died. This past week, the people of Tennis Lane lost their Mayberry-like innocence.

This is a tough time of year to experience grief. Then again, any time is difficult to work through grief to the point of acceptance.

As I write my Christmas cards, my own sense of sorrow rises with the number of cards no longer sent, or sent with only one half of last year’s salutation.

We have to make the best of every Christmas, every day, every moment — for one day we will have another loss that no glittering gift can fill.

• Mike McLellan can be contacted by calling and leaving a message at 830-4201 or

e-mailing him at DrMikeM@sbcglobal.net.