Forty seven years ago today was the day of my father’s funeral. I am out on my daily five mile run and I am listening to the iconic What Becomes of the Broken Hearted. I must have listened to this song over one thousand times. I have a powerful memory of sitting on my bed in Highland Park, New Jersey and listening to this song on my tiny transistor radio. It was moments before I would be driven to the funeral and I was trying my best to take in the lyrics about devastating loss that came from the soulful, mourning voice of Jimmy Ruffin. However, I couldn’t experience the full meaning of the words because I was in a stupor; a state of utter shock. I couldn’t feel anything at all.

I now have internal visual pictures of the graveyard workers digging a hole for my father’s casket at the same time the funeral was going on. I have the sickening memory of the rabbi being aghast because my father didn’t have a Jewish name. I have agonized over these painful memories countless times; like a man forced to make sense of the senseless. I cry in pain at this injustice and the lack of dignity expressed for my poor dead father.

Then the song ends like it did a thousand times before and I always feel this penetrating sense of incompletion. No matter how much I cry or how many new insights I discover while listening to this song, I feel like an exceptional vision is just beyond my sight. I feel like a piece of my soul has gone missing and my heart isn’t experiencing an essential part of healing.

I replay What Becomes of the Broken Hearted. I think the reason I want to continue to listen to this song is to honor my dad’s memory and to remember what happened that day. But, there is nothing new to acquire here. I have covered this ground for almost five decades; there is no more information to obtain, no missing pieces of the puzzle, it’s over.

I push replay again once it ends and the familiar bass line strums like a dirge. I know that this song usually makes me cry and I often long for a release of these pent up tears. Suddenly as I am running in the heart of the City, these words pop into my head, “You keep listening to this song because you want the ending to be different. You hope that one day this song is going to end and your dad will be standing in front of you with a smile on his face. Then he will give you that hug you want so desperately.”

I keep running and I have one of those gut level cries where the pain is felt in the stomach and comes out through the throat. Continual listening to What Becomes will not bring my father back. Nothing will.

The song depicts hopelessness of loss. It is time to move past that. Joan Armatrading’s This Charming Life comes through the headphones and I see images of me and Gail, my wife of forty one year’s dancing at a concert. There is a smile on her face and we are moving with wild abandon to the music. The joy opens my heart and I feel so lucky to be in love.

Then Bruce Springsteen’s Ten Avenue Freeze Out comes on. At this moment I transcend all the emotional pain that has accumulated throughout my life. As my feet hit the pavement, I see the stuck grief leave my body. It flows upward and downward drifting away.

I am not on 10th Avenue in Asbury Park. I am on 24th Street in the Mission District, San Francisco as I head back to my office to meet with my psychotherapy clients.

I meet with a mother age sixty and her thirty year old daughter. They have had a difficult time in their relationship and have been emotionally estranged. After two years, they are able to feel safe and loving towards each other. I say to them “My father was buried forty seven years ago today. I was not able to work through my differences with him, but I am honored that I have been able to help the two of you find each other.” The tears well up in my eyes and I know at this moment my grief has come full circle.

Here is where you can learn to heal your grief.