Is grief a “negative” emotion? Is it an emotion at all? We often tend to conflate what causes an emotion with the value of the emotion itself. I argue that grief plays an unappreciated positive role in our experience. I also suggest that we too often tend to think of emotions as distinctive feelings and not as processes, but grief is a clear case of an emotional process. I similarly suggest that gratitude is an unappreciated emotion in ethics. But, on (...) a cosmic level, there is some question who the grateful person is grateful to. (shrink)