In the last few weeks, people around me have been hit by loss – friends, family and the loss of someone else that had an impact on my life. It has provided some opportunity to share my experience with grief and losing someone you hold dear.
It struck me that while I would give anything to have my mom and my sister back, if I didn’t have the experience of losing them I wouldn’t truly understand the heartache or the pain. I guess that is a small blessing in a situation that I would give anything to change.
Not that everyone grieves the same way but I do think it is one of those life experiences that make us equal as human beings. We all love and we all experience loss at some point in life.
I also think that loss can take on many forms – death, change, loss of friendship, distance, loss of job, loss of relationship. I’ve lost people I love to death and I’ve mourned the passing of what I had once believed a lifelong relationships or friendships. In all cases, I grieved deeply and sometimes overwhelmingly but I looking back, the process can be the same.
When it comes to the passing of someone close, I think there is a sadness that I will always carry with me for the rest of my life. I didn’t have it before and it has never fully gone away. However, it is different than it once was.
In the beginning, it was like having debilitating waves of grief wash over me. If you ever have been in the ocean and felt how strong it could push you and pull you, it was that constant tossing in turbulent waters.
Eventually, the waters calmed and the frequency and strength of those waves lessened. But they never really completely go away. Every so often, there are moments when the waves still come and I still miss that person and I still grieve. Recently, it was in a lyric of a song I sang, in a moment of joy that I wish they were here to share it with me or just wishing I could hear “I love you” or “I believe in you” one more time.
And I think that it will always be with me. In my heart there are two empty spaces that no one can fill.
But the nice thing about the heart, it makes room for other people and other relationships and it in turn, it grows. Joy truly does come in the morning. It may take some time for the morning to come but it does. Relationships with friends and family have fostered and grown in ways that may not have happened in the past. New life has entered our family in the form a wonderful new great-nephew and he has already taken a piece of my heart.
These are little gifts that don’t replace the ones we’ve lost but to help us to grow and see joy in life again. I think it is God’s way of showing us how big our hearts are and that while there is pain, there is still a lot of joy in what He has given us; we just have to look for it. That joy is worth the price of pain that can come.
And I have come to believe that those of us who have experience loss are supposed to help others move through the process and be lights of hope that there will be joy on the other side.
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Beautiful, Paula...
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