To make matters worse, this boredom offered no protection from the capriciousness of grief. We think of “boring” as synonymous with “predictable,” but I found the process of grieving to be simultaneously volatile and tedious. In this, it resembled the experience of being in the hospital while my father was dying; the emotions were enormous and erratic, the days cramped and repetitive. Like stress, depression, and physical pain, grief wears us down by the mere fact of always being there.
