Loss

I’ve lost three people I loved dearly. All of them otherwise fit and healthy, in mind and body. For any of them I would have done anything to keep them had I known about something I could do. But loss doesn’t work like that, they were not mine to keep.

There were many aspects of loss across the three. Two died, one is still alive. One died young and suddenly, the other older and more slowly. One accident, one illness, and one separation. One loss felt like the process of life taking its course, the other two felt ripped apart from me.

All of them now intertwined. I try to see them as the events they were, or “things that happened”, not reflections on me, such as “why does everyone I love go away?”. I try to see any opportunity to grow through any suffering.

After the first loss, the tragic death of my brother in an accident, I felt like absorbing his energy into me, to say “fuck it” to life somehow. I was angry too, that so many people who seem to care for nothing in their life continue to live, yet he died.

The second loss, the death of my mum, was more peaceful, gradual, expected, and as good as it could ever be given the circumstances, but so deeply unfair. She had done everything she could to keep healthy in mind and body. She had reached a point of contentment in her life after many struggles of various kinds over the decades. Losing a parent is also a big moment and for me reveals the somewhat amorphous shape that is the rest of my life.

The third loss is the least understandable to me. Still very recent. There is no certainty to fall back on as it was a separation, and a choice of theirs. One which I suspect I will never truly understand. I think it will teach me a lot about the many hurdles there are in giving and receiving love. I believe these kind of moments give me the biggest clues about what is really going on under the surface of my everyday persona. Now I’ve peeked inside, I don’t want to waste that opportunity to explore. I just wish we could have explored together.

Loss is intrinsic to life. It couldn’t be any other way. One of the things that has always helped me with loss is the sense that it is a profoundly human experience to have. Connecting us across all people and all time, in the same way that looking up at the stars at night connects us with humans that lived thousands of years ago.

After loss possibly comes growth, or new life. This is something that worries me at times, as I can feel more life leaving than life arriving. In some very simple ways too, my family used to have four generations of mothers alive, now it has two.

One of the long term confusions of my life has been how to integrate my personal reality with that of other people, and then those with the greater whole we exist in. I never really found any ways to do this that worked reliably, so it’s been slow progress, and a constant evolution. This is now the topic of growth or new life for me.

It’s possible, even normal, to live a siloed existence, keeping each of personal, relationship, family, project, work, politics, economics, and spirituality separated from each other. But to me it feels important now to reunite them somewhat, to find out how they can nurture and sustain each other within an ecosystem. That feels like a pathway towards resilience, both personally and for our wider society. We need more resilience for the losses coming our way.

It’s unfortunate that it’s only when losing something do I really realise what it was.