Identity: Search for Self

In meditating on the idea of sweetness, which for Lee means tenderness plus grief, the speaker of "The Weight of Sweetness" examines his own emotional relationship to the past and to his father, hoping that such an examination will better help him integrate the memory of his father into his own life. The capacity to integrate the past, especially loss, into one's life successfully is often the mark of someone with a strong sense of identity.

Human beings often experience a sweep of emotions after losing a loved one, from denial to anger to grief and, finally, to acceptance; but after enough time has passed these emotions frequently settle into a kind of bittersweet nostalgia in which they mourn for the loved one yet simultaneously remember the happiness shared with that person. The inability to find peace with one's losses often marks a self still...