Reflections on Loss
Reflections on Loss
The trees savor the leaves up to their last moment, showing them off in glorious displays of orange, red and yellow, and then graciously release them to the wind and ground. We study them in wonderment, knowing that this is goodbye, resigning ourselves to rakes and colder days.
The moon, a constant cycle of gain and loss, shrinks and swells monthly. That largest roundest moment indicates that slimming days are ahead, that tiny crescent whispers “Now I will grow again.”
The seasons comfort us, as they predictably bring shorter and longer daylight hours, daylight savings time interfering to make us think time is about clocks, not planets. As the long summer days are lost, we know just what will arrive. Here in Minnesota, cozy fall fires and soups, followed by frigid darkness, gasping for breath. And then sweet green reemerges, beloved plants awakening again from long naps.
Other losses are not so predictable, not reassuring but frightening. After my second parent died, I wondered, who will my family of origin be without those pivot points? Will my siblings care enough to see each other, to speak? After my precious dog died suddenly, still young, red blood cells crashing and all systems breaking down, I didn’t know if I would want another dog, and how I would live without one.
After my child is grown, more or less on their own, I am asking, how will my life evolve? How will the empty nest compel other pieces of the puzzle to shift, to rearrange themselves?
Loss, when it’s the natural order of things, can be beautiful. My mother’s final days, as I lay on her bed beside her, felt like nothing so much as waiting for a baby to be born. We were waiting for the gates between the worlds to open and all cells and planets to shift and realign. It was sweet and beautiful, even in the heartbreak.
Loss, when it is unexpected, a shock, rips open old wounds, tears all connective tissue, seeps into every corner and crevice to ask Why? What now? Numbness, gauze over heart, an endless loop of mind scrambling in desperation to put Humpty Dumpty back on that wall.
The floor, the very ground, falls away. There is fog. The sky, familiar constellations, are obscured by clouds. There is static on the wire. Rubber legs. No connective tissue. Brain synapses not firing. I’m unable to find my keys, my phone, my words. Unable to remember what I said I’d do, what I needed to accomplish. I realize my shirt is on backwards and not caring. People’s words are far away, unreal, not connecting. So much is irrelevant, irritating, in the way of — what? Of the hole, the wound, the gaping screech of void, the center, the epicenter, the here and now of my private invisible hell of nothingness.
Habits, routines are done numbly. I smile vaguely at people, not sure why. Sleep is not renewing, it is a deep tunnel down, both desired and frightening. I wake up again knowing in my cells something is deeply wrong, before my mind tells me what it is. I claw, I want to go backwards in time, I want to go back to sleep and awaken to a different day. But there is no different day.
In such times, may the trees teach me grace. May the moon remind me that I will fill and then empty again. May the seasons comfort me, even in their blur. May the earth hold me fast, reminding me of my place in the everchanging orbit of it all.
