I’ve written much on grief. In writing class they tell you to write what you know, but this isn’t why I’ve written about the subject. I’ve felt compelled. Driven to do so, in an attempt to share my hard-fought knowledge and maybe, perhaps, help others to understand a non-understandable topic — to create order from chaos. To bring clarity from the fog. To communicate about the uncomfortable.

So I write what I know. And wish I didn’t know. I wish I weren’t an expert on the topic. But I can only grow and live through my experiences, and one of the most transforming ones in my life so far has been grief.

Writing about it is hard. It hurts. Even now. But I think it is important. For sure for me, but hopefully also for others who are struggling with the same painful void that comes from losing someone dear. I hope maybe it helps, to know others (me) struggle to breathe and still continue to survive. 

In that, I hope you will allow me an analogy.

Grief is like sea glass.

Both start out as something completely fractured and broken. Simply shards — pieces of nothing that used to be something.

The edges are sharp and hurtful. They can cut in an instant without the recipient even realizing it happened until the blood is overflowing and the pain is unbearable.

At this stage, grief isn’t pretty. It is most often ugly. Shattered. Fragmented. Splintered. Nearly destroyed and unusable. 

Much like broken glass.

In the midst of its brokenness, unusable and destroyed glass (just garbage at this point) is carelessly tossed aside, into the waters of the ocean, and becomes an unwilling participant in the tide. In that is pummeled and tumbled by the sands and the shells and the sea — over and over and over as the tide moves in and out and in again. 

During this process, the glass is transformed — magically and miraculously so. Slowly. Gradually. Painstakingly. On the atomic level — one shard at a time. One wave at a time.

Edges, once sharp and hurtful become rounded, soft and gently curved. A bright and shiny surface becomes muted, matte and frosted.

And somehow, to the naked eye, this new look is revered. The sands of time take the sharp, broken and ordinary glass and transform it into something beautiful. And that’s not all, the sea water and sand chemically alters the glass. It is transformed — on a cellular level — into something it never could have dreamed of being before.

A similar transformation comes from deep grief. Upon impact, it cuts you to the quick. But over time, the jagged edges become smoother, soft even. It transforms you on a cellular level to something you could have never dreamed of being before.

Mind you, this change, while good in a number of ways, is not something you ever would have chosen. You still long to be a beer bottle or vase or wine glass. You still long to be intact. But that is no longer possible, because somewhere you were broken by grief and thrown into the tide and in that something unexpectedly beautiful — and beyond your own control — occurred. And even though you never would have chosen it, and still wouldn’t choose it now, you accept it. It has become a part of you and that will never change.

You realize it is how you were meant to be all along. That this transformation was planned all along. And as hard as it is and was, you know and understand that sea glass is beautiful in its own right. And you long and hope for the same transformation for yourself.

— Jill Pertler’s column Slices of Life appears regularly in the Times. She can be reached at 

slicescolumn@gmail.com.