Facing Loss To Survive And Thrive

It has been less than a month since my mother died. She left us on the morning of Friday, April 13 – an appropriate date, I think. And I THOUGHT I was doing pretty well with her loss. I had been preparing myself for its eventuality since her diagnosis in November, and I had done lots of deep grieving on my own – with lots of soul-racking sobs – along the way before we got to the end. I have been reading, and reflecting, and working hard at facing the loss instead of burying my head in the sand and ignoring it. I have been talking to my dad on the phone every day - sometimes more than once – and helping him work through his loss, too, with laughter and tears. And I thought I was doing ok.

Then yesterday morning, I was planning our courtyard garden flowers, and a question about bulbs popped in my head and I reached for the phone, thinking “I’ll just ask Mom.”

And it hit me.

Really hit me.

She’s gone. There will be no more “quick questions” phone call. No more “girl talk” chats. No more sessions of laughter over Yahtzee. And I can’t quite believe it. How could it happen so fast? How could she wither away literally to nothing in a matter of weeks? It’s all so unfair.

And I KNOW I am not the only person to ever suffer a loss. Many among my circle are dealing with their own forms of grief right now. Whether it was a mother, a son, an aunt, a dear friend, a spouse, or someone else, we all have someone special in our lives who leaves a gigantic hole in their wake. My mother was truly my best friend. I was so very lucky. We talked about everything together. And I miss her so very much.

Spiritualists say that when a loved one who has crossed over appears in your dreams, they are there to comfort you and let you know that they have not gone completely. Last night, my mother appeared in my dreams. Her presence was not comforting, however, as in my dream she appeared angry and frustrated. She was not ready to pass over. I know that. She’s mad at life for handing her this bum rap. I am, too. She wasn’t ready to leave my dad alone yet. Neither was he. But here we all are. So what are we supposed to do about it?

Rationally, I know my life is going on. I am alive, I am in relatively good health, I have a roof over my head and food on my table and a wonderful husband and 5 wonderful fur babies. We have relatively few serious concerns, and a circle of family and friends surrounding us. The sun continues to rise in the morning and set in the evening. The cycle of life continues, even though my mother is no longer a part of its daily workings.

But my heart feels differently.

My heart wants life to stop, to rewind, to go back to those moments before she got sick again, to just keep repeating the happy times over and over again, when she was fully with us.

So how do we reconcile the rational and the emotional?

Here is where I again must turn to the wisdom of Jerry Sittser in A Grace Disguised. He writes, “Gifts of grace come to all of us. But we must be ready to see and willing to receive these gifts. It will require a kind of sacrifice, the sacrifice of believing that, however painful our losses, life can still be good – good in a different way than before, but nevertheless good…I have lost, but I have also gained. I lost the world I loved, but I gained a deeper awareness of grace. That grace has enabled me to clarify my purpose in life and rediscover the wonder of the present moment.”

“Our sense of personal identity depends largely on the roles we play and the relationships we have. What we do and what we know contributes significantly to how we understand ourselves. Catastrophic loss is like undergoing an amputation of our identity….it is like the amputation of the self from the self….It is the amputation of the self we once were or wanted to be, the self we can no longer be or become.”

“Loss then leads to a confusion of identity. Since we understand ourselves in large measure by the roles we play and the relationships we have, we find ourselves in a vertigo when these are changed or lost.”

“But it is not simply the loss of identity that causes a problem. It is also the difficult conditions under which a new identity must be formed. Catastrophic loss cannot be mitigated by replacements….A convenient passage to a new identity is usually out of the question.”

“For those who have endured irreversible loss, phantom pains of their former identity may linger for a long time. There are reminders of the former life everywhere and they may appear in surprising ways.”

“This crisis of identity, however, can lead to the formation of a new identity that integrates the loss into it. Loss creates a new set of circumstances in which we must live. When, at the right time, we are able to acknowledge the ineradicable nature of those circumstances we can begin forging a new life for ourselves. Loss establishes a new context for life.”

And as Frederick Buechner asserted, “Even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead.”

In the context of my mother’s loss, a new identity is emerging for me, one in which I am an intuitive healing empath. I am tapping into the heredity that lies in her family tree to recognize, acknowledge, and develop the particular gifts that I know are there. That will be the way I can reconcile the hole in my heart with the ability to move on each day.

And if I can help others in their struggles with grief, even better. Though our individual experiences of loss are unique, they bring us together in a the knowledge that loss is also universal. Let’s make our #circleoftrees strong enough to hold up all the battered trunks in our midst. Sharing the pain helps us to work through it.