The Thing About Loss…

When I started thinking about creating “Safe Harbor Pathways”, I felt compelled to write about life transitions. I have recently strayed away from the direct association with life transitions within my content with discussions regarding how families might use the Kitchen Table to talk about core values. While I have enjoyed my reveries about the Kitchen Table, I have decided to return to the transition that has been most difficult for me to provide anything meaningful. Loss is something that we all experience. It is also very complex. How do my thoughts about loss have any bearing on what others experience? What can I say about loss that will help loss recovery? I have read everything from the five stages of grief to therapists’ viewpoints on grief recovery. Each article, book, or essay about loss and grief say essentially the same thing. Go through the five stages and give yourself time to recover.

We each have experiencd loss and, given a reasonably long life, we will continue to experience the vacuum in our lives that loss creates.  I have created and discarded many ideas about how to write anything that makes sense with regard to loss and grief. I have just completed binging on “The Madison” by Taylor Sheridan. As usual, his work is beautiful, raw, funny, sad, emotion-filled and thought provoking. This program led me to conclude that one common element prevails across the spectrum of grief and loss.

My sister recently lost her husband. I recently lost a dear friend and mental/spiritual brother. My sister and I have lost our parents and grandparents. We have lost other close and more distant relatives and friends. We are each in stages of grief over these losses. The last of the five steps is acceptance. In some ways that may be the most difficult. Accepting life without those that have cared for us and sustained us is incredibly difficult. I think the element that is common to how we transition into loss acceptance is that we must consciously “give ourselves permission” to accept our losses with the caveat that our they will take different forms in our lives.

The forms that the departed take within each of us varies from person to person and from stage to stage. I have learned that, for me, the acceptance stage arrives when I can have a dream about my friend, recount a saying from my dad, or a piece of advice from my mom that elicits a smile. For me, that smile is a recognition that I have given myself “permission to accept the loss” and to live with their presence residing in my memory and emotions. My sister recently visited Big Bend National Park and surrounding area where she and her husband found peace in the solitude and star scapes. It was cathartic for her as she returned to the next phase of her transition…downsizing.  

Loss is difficult. In fact, it may be the most difficult of life transitions. Loss usually resides permanently in a “box in our mental attic”. We retrieve and open it when the holidays arrive or when the irises bloom or when we are awakened at 3:00 am from an astoundingly realistic dream. Within the emotional cost of loss, we find the precious value of life with its constant change and requirement to value the moment. It is “in the moment” that our losses set the stage for our love of life.

bill@safeharborpathways.com