My experience with both my parents is that grief has a lot of down sad things but I was also really emotionally raw in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely my relationships were hotter and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules.
I reached a time in college when I didn't know what I wanted to do. At that time women's careers were essentially nursing secretarial and teaching. My mother advised me to get my teacher's certificate.
My father who was from a wealthy family and highly educated a lawyer Yale and Columbia walked out with the benefit of a healthy push from my mother a seventh grade graduate who took a typing course and got a secretarial job as fast as she could.
The usual channels of university studies or secretarial work did not appeal to me. I cherished difficult dreams through confidence in myself.