The Difference between Sadness and Depression

When I am depressed, I am never depressed about anything specific. I'm depressed about the way the world is, or about the way I am in the world.
It's akin to free-floating anxiety. I'm not worried about whether a certain job that I want will come my way, or whether a performance I'm going to be in will be successful. I'm worried in a general, unfocused way, about everything.
When I'm depressed, I wake up at four or five in the morning and lie there, knowing it's pointless to get up and equally pointless to stay in bed. 'when I'm anxious, I can't fall asleep. Fortunately, I'm rarely both anxious and depressed at the same time. That would leave me about half an hour to sleep.
Now I'm sad. I'm sad about something very specific: my wonderful son died.
When I'm depressed, I know, from experience, that the depression will pass. Fortunately I've never sunk into deep, clinical depression. I think it's a matter of biorhythms for me - if people still believe in biorhythms these days. Or else I've been sick or am about to be sick. Like now. I had the flu last week, and I'm still recovering, left with annoying, hacking cough. That's depressing. The cough will eventually go away, I'll feel better, and I'll forget how sick I was.
But I know that this sadness about Asher won't pass.
There's something stupid about this situation, not about being sad now, but about ever having thought I was completely happy. Only a mindless adult could ever be completely happy. Was I ever mindless? Was I ever completely happy? Neither of the above - but I apparently possessed a high ability to ignore the sadness of life.
On Saturday our daughter was here with her three children, and around two o'clock the sun was bright and warm. I went out for a walk with our two big old dogs and my two grandsons, the seven-year-old and the three-year-old. We walked down the flight of stone stairs at the top of the dead-end street that leads down in the direction of Mount Zion. The seven-year-old raced down the hill with all the recklessness of his age, and I held the hand of the cautious three-year-old as we made our slower way down.
We turned left on Ein Rogel Street, walked to the corner of the Hebron Road, and crossed, waiting patiently for the lights to change. We walked downhill till we came to a short stone stairway leading up to the hill adjacent to the Scottish Church. I had promised the seven-year-old to take him back to some ancient tombs that I had shown him once. All of the Hinnom Valley is honeycombed with ancient burial caves. The ones I had in mind are nestled between the Scottish Church and the new Begin Center. The seven-year-old asked me whether Asher was buried there.
After we visited the burial caves, which were flooded from the recent rains, we climbed up to the top of the grassy hill, which, for some reason, remains undeveloped in the center of an over-developed city. Yellow and red wildflowers were blooming, the dogs roamed about freely, several families with young children were up there enjoying the sun, the view, and the flowers. I looked at the splendid view to the East with my grandson, pointing out the walls of the Old City, Jaffa Gate, Mount Zion, the hotel where his parents were married, the Mount of Olives, the Judean Desert, and the deep valley where the Dead Sea nestles, out of sight.
That was a happy moment: holding the three-year-old boy's hand and watching the seven-year-old climb up every rock and jump off safely onto the soft ground beneath.