Seeing butterflies

I came across this entry in a meditations book that I have. I thought of how much it embodied the way I was feeling right now. I still occasionally find it difficult to admit that I am having a good day because I feel like I am forgetting about grieving (the sad, lonely, angry parts) for Julia, when in fact I find that I am thinking of her (still sad she is not here) but now I am able to think of all the wonderful lives she has touched with her short presence her on earth. I find myself smiling more often even though I still terribly wish she was with me here in my arms.

They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods. - Edith Wharton

It comes to us as a revelation at first - an astonishment - almost an occasion of guilt. We can be happy!
Maybe we thought it would not happen, that our life would be forever coloured with pain, that no moment would be free if it.
There is a way in which we are right: no moment is ever free of the life history that has preceded it. And we don't want that. One of the things we sometimes fear - needlessly - is that, having lost the loved one, we will lose the memory of the loved one as well. That will not happen.
But we will lose, or be released from, the overhanging cloud of gloom which for a while may seem our daily portion. Part of that is up to us. We can decide not to be happy again. It may take a lot of work - never to be happy again - but we can do it if we want to.
How much better - and how much more a tribute to the one we have lost - to walk out from under our cloud, so that when we come upon a butterfly in the winter woods, we will be able to see it!

Gloom has no value of itself. It's fine to be happy.