Grief is a universal experience. It represents our response to loss. The more we feel love and a sense of attachment with others, the greater is our experience of loss when separation occurs.

And separation is inevitable. It is a price we pay for being human. My family and I continue to feel sadness following my father's death earlier this year. And yet, we carry on with our lives.

Grief and depression have stimulated the creative talents of many artists, who are best at expressing the human experience. A recent lecture sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center featured the distinguished Scottish poet, Douglas Dunn, who presented a talk titled, "Grief and Depression: Disease or the Human Condition?"

Dunn was already a highly respected poet when his wife, Leslie, died from melanoma at age 37. In 1985, he published a series of poems in a book titled "Elegies," regarded as one of the finest expositions on the subject of grief.

During the lecture, Dunn told us that writing poetry was not really a therapy for grief. Rather, writing poems allows a fine-tuned description of feelings that, at the time, might be even more painful:

"No, don't stop writing your grievous poetry.
It will do you good, this work of your grief.
Keep writing until there is nothing left.
It will take time, and the years will go by."  

A person's sense of grief may be influenced by their personality, culture, religion, and the nature of their loss. Grief, for example, from the death of an elderly relative in hospice care will be different from an unexpected death by accident or suicide.

Grief is normal, of course, but sadness that is long term and unremitting and that interferes with daily functioning may represent clinical depression. Major depression should be promptly identified because it dramatically impairs people's thoughts and actions and it may have devastating consequences. Most importantly, it is treatable.

Even if grief does not evolve into major depression, in some cases it still can become overwhelming and disabling. In such cases, grief counseling or participation in a support group may be very helpful.

Although grief can result from a variety of losses, most grief-related groups are devoted to the responding to the death of a loved one. Some organizations, such as Compassionate Friends, focus on grief following the death of a child, while others are more general.