Meeting with a friend today who’s also an expert in chaplaincy, we mused about the meaning in the family losses we’ve endured. I think we sort of agreed that with loss there ought to be space for grace and the freedom to find one’s own way through grief.
Much of the weekly and sometimes daily correspondence I still get from our loss of Nathanael pivots around the same thing.
In loss, so much is taken away, and so few options are left. Maximising one’s agency seems one scant permission available to us. It’s those spaces where we’re free to be still, quiet, weep if we can, sob without fear of embarrassment, even pace or walk in circles if we must.
Spaces free of advice, judgment, or condemnation for the chosen activity.
If there’s one thing we can say about loss with absolute clarity it’s that it’s a confusing experience. We ask, why? We ask, why me? We ask, how long? Especially as we endure what seems like months and even years of agonising moments interspersed with brief adjuncts of normality, we wonder what the meaning of such a period is.
Where there’s no answer, THAT’S the answer. Ambiguity is its own invitation. Entering the cauldron of a vacuous space, we’re there to discover what we would not otherwise if not for grief.
Loss flips us over in a moment from relative balance to listing and teetering for what seems the rest of our lives. We don’t know what hurts most, the loss of the person or life we had or the grief of our loss itself? Nothing’s certain in grief except perhaps the certainty of the presence of pain.
In attempting to draw meaning from loss, it’s good that we take the resilience we attain for enduring ambiguity as a win in and of itself.
The fact is we’re stronger for simply holding together what might threaten to rip us apart.
Loss teaches us that we are NOT in as much control of this life than we think we are. Loss bears witness to the potential of life to be changed in the blink of an eye. It makes us more grateful than we’ve ever been for the simple blessings we take for granted each day. Loss teaches us that grief is a pain we endure for love. It creates awareness in us of the concept of suffering—a concept foreign to so many in Western life in this opulent day.
Loss is such a confusing time there just must be space for the person grieving to do what they must; get support... be alone... talk it through... stare... whatever... whatever it is they choose to do, it’s valid and need never be criticised.
It’s often the only choice a grieving person has. Therefore, it’s what they should have.
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