My Confirmation Saint

speaks to my soul, from the Dominicana blog:

Aquinas identifies sorrow as arising from the recognition of something lacking, a lacking that effects us in a painful and interior way (ST I-II, q. 35). When we are mourning a loved one, we feel this interior pain because we are coming to terms with the reality: this person whom we loved so much is no longer with us. It is precisely in this painful process of mourning that the goodness of the person becomes more apparent to us, which can have the effect of intensifying our sadness (cf. ST I-II, q. 37).

This mourning period—painful as the stirring up of our memory of the person is—can be an opportunity to be thankful to God. In our recollections, we think of the person we miss (how he talked, treated us kindly, etc.). As we think of these qualities, we come to realize how God’s ever present love has been working in our lives for our good, in its own mysterious way. It turns out that what we are really missing is not just the person in himself, but the goodness which God endowed him with in his own particular way. We miss this particular instantiation of the goodness of God as it overflowed and was constructed in this person.