The Melancholy of Perfection: Finding Beauty in Grief

The melancholy of life is not lost on me. Neither is its beauty.

As I got ready for my morning walk with our puppy Sóla, I noticed I had forgotten to charge my phone overnight. I decided to leave it at home. I told myself I didn’t need it. At most, I might have used it to take a picture. It might feel good to walk without the phone and its little invitations to look away.

The brisk, icy air filled my lungs. Everything felt especially fresh. Fall had met winter in the night, and the grass was stiff with frost. You could hear it crunch beneath your feet. Sóla was in heaven. I noticed a particular pep in her step as she touched the cold ground and tasted the frozen blades of grass. It was her first experience of frost.

I let myself watch her. The valley was quiet. Sunlight began to shine through the tall trees, whose leaves would soon be bare. As I stood beneath them, leaves fell around me. The beauty felt almost startling.

I am learning that finding beauty in grief does not mean finding beauty in loss itself. It means letting the beauty that is still here reach me, even as I feel its impermanence and miss what is gone.

This was one of those moments that seemed to ask to be shared. I wanted to turn to someone and say, look at this. Look at Sóla discovering frost. Look at the light through the trees. But I was there by myself.

For a moment, I wished I had brought my phone. Not only to take a picture, perhaps, but to keep some small proof of what I had seen. Then I reminded myself that some moments ask us to use our eyes as the camera and our minds as the place where the picture is kept.

Grief has changed the way I look at beauty. It can make the ordinary feel more vivid, perhaps because loss has made me more aware of how much I love what is here, and how little control I have over how long it stays. But that awareness carries its own sadness. The moment is beautiful, and I know it will pass. I feel its fullness, and I feel the absence of the person I might once have turned toward.

Nothing lasts. Not even that perfect morning. By the afternoon, the frost had melted and the grass was green again. There was no picture to show anyone. The morning had happened, and then it was gone.

The next morning, I went out again, but this time a wave of anxiety and melancholy came over me. I have always been prone to overthinking. I can be hard on myself and quickly feel overwhelmed. My thoughts can become so black and white for a moment that I see the obstacles and lose sight of what might still be possible.

There is no wonder I feel these things. It has been a lot. Life has been a whirlwind. My brain cannot be expected to produce happy feelings on demand, especially when there is grief in my heart. And then there are the hormonal shifts of perimenopause, adding another layer to the experience of being human.

So I begin where I am. I come home, put on music, tidy the kitchen, and feed myself. I write. I process my thoughts, try to shift my perspective, and go to yoga. These things do not erase the melancholy. They give me somewhere to begin.

Slowly, I find my way back to myself. Back to center. Back to seeing possibilities alongside the obstacles and challenges.

Maybe this is the melancholy of perfection: the ache of wanting to hold a beautiful moment in place, and the wish to feel well enough that the sadness will stay away. But the frost melts. Our feelings change. We lose our center and find it again. Beauty and sorrow can live in the same day.

I am learning to let the melancholy have some space without letting it tell me the whole story. I do not have to choose between noticing the beauty and missing what is gone. I can feel both. I can let the moment be perfect without asking it to last.

For now, I am off to make a smoothie, tidy the kitchen, and make a list for the week ahead.