Deep Loss
What do we do in the wake of loss?
We lose all kinds of things – people, jobs, opportunities, health, youth, hopes, dreams. The question is not what do we do if we experience loss, but what do we do when we experience loss?
Deep loss can settle in our bodies as depression or anxiety. It can be the cause of divorce or suicide. It can be the root of profound loneliness.
We can drown in a tsunami of deep loss, or we can look toward the back side of it and seek, if not find, the blessing of the curse. Looking for the blessing does not change the loss but it does keep us looking up, trying to stay positive, and moving forward. Alchemizing deep loss into blessing may look like a poem, a garden, a meal, a ritual, a song, a dance, a practice, an anything.
Grief support groups, books about grief, and counseling can all be life rings when drowning in the tsunami. Crying, writing, moving, silence, listening to music, and being outside have been helpful for me. Bessel van der Kolk writes that trauma occurs when we feel emotion but can’t act on it. If we can act on it, we move through it. I seek ways to act on the emotions I feel.
June 8th marked the four-year anniversary of the passing of my daughter, Isabelle. She died in a car accident when she was 15 years old. She was a healthy, thriving teenager. I called her ‘my lover of life.’ She embraced every opportunity, every experience, and every human. She was a superb role model for not taking life, or one’s self, too seriously.
I liken grief to surfing (which she was learning). The tsunami of deep loss, like waves, comes and goes. I have zero control over it. The question is when it comes, can I be nimble enough to ride it? I practice meeting the day, and sometimes the moment, however, it presents itself, asking myself (not out loud) ‘well, let’s see what today brings.’ Sometimes it is unanticipated hurt. Sometimes it is unanticipated joy.
Time has offered no salve to Isabelle’s physical absence. Losing Isabelle has not gotten easier with time. Elizabeth Kubler writes, you don’t ‘get over it,’ you rebuild yourself around it. You grow around the grief, but the grief stays at your core. I can’t remember what used to be at my core, but now it is the physical absence of Isabelle.
No article of clothing, piece of furniture, vacation, or television show alleviates the pain I feel as a result of Isabelle’s absence. No ice cream, cocktail, or dessert. Sometimes flowers. But only sometimes. Deep loss changes us forever on the inside, despite how things look on the outside.
When we feel deep loss, how are we to respond when someone asks, How are you? Fine? Terrible? What do we say? How do we do it? How do we talk about it on the phone, at the grocery store, when we meet someone casually while taking a walk? When we are newly pregnant, we pass others knowing we hold a beautiful, life-affirming secret. During loss, we walk around with a hole, darkness, and a weight that no one can see or alleviate.
People ask if it is okay to talk with me about Isabelle. They are afraid it might be difficult for me. Losing Isabelle is difficult, regardless of whether or not I talk about it. Mostly, talking about her feels good because it is honest. She is on my mind no less than if she were here in body. To not talk about her is to dismiss the loss I feel and the way I continue to hold her each day.
I feel charged with the responsibility to live as best as I can and to live for her. I am her boots on Earth. It’s common for my husband, son, or I to say, “Isabelle made me do it,” particularly if what we are doing involves eating ice cream or watching more television than we should.
The First Law of Thermodynamics states energy is neither created nor destroyed. If so, then Isabelle is eternal and everywhere, which is exactly where she’d want to be.
No one writes about grief more beautifully than Elizabeth Gilbert. This passage puts language to that which is so very difficult to articulate:
“People keep asking me how I’m doing, and I’m not always sure how to answer that. It depends on the day. It depends on the minute. Right this moment, I’m OK. Yesterday, not so good. Tomorrow, we’ll see.
Here is what I have learned about Grief, though.
I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.
The only way that I can “handle” Grief, then, is the same way that I “handle” Love — by not “handling” it. By bowing down before its power, in complete humility.
When Grief comes to visit me, it’s like being visited by a tsunami. I am given just enough warning to say, “Oh my god, this is happening RIGHT NOW,” and then I drop to the floor on my knees and let it rock me. How do you survive the tsunami of Grief? By being willing to experience it, without resistance.
The conversation of Grief, then, is one of prayer-and-response.
Grief says to me: “You will never love anyone the way you loved Rayya.” And I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.” Grief says: “She’s gone, and she’s never coming back.” I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.” Grief says: “You will never hear that laugh again.” I say: “I am willing.” Grief says, “You will never smell her skin again.” I get down on the floor on my fucking knees, and — and through my sheets of tears — I say, “I AM WILLING.” This is the job of the living — to be willing to bow down before EVERYTHING that is bigger than you. And nearly everything in this world is bigger than you.
I don’t know where Rayya is now. It’s not mine to know. I only know that I will love her forever. And that I am willing.
Onward.” Read the whole passage here