Amidst the vibrant renewal of Spring, very sadly, this month, two of my dear friends experienced the rapid decline and death of their long-term partners. Watching someone we love suffer at the end of their lives is one of the most heart-wrenching experiences we can ever have, made somehow all the more cruel occurring at this time of the year. My own father died in the midst of Spring many years ago, and I know the incongruity of wanting to rejoice in the return of new life while desperately watching it drain from the person you love.
Losing someone we care about is inevitably an aspect of all of our lives, and while we’re aware of this reality on some level, still, the experience so often hits us unexpectedly and we’re never fully prepared for how to deal with the suffering when it lands on our doorstep.
Watching the demise of a loved one, even with the most vigilant of care, is like being forced to fight a rapidly losing battle. It can erode any feeling of control we have or topple how we make sense of the world, suddenly throwing us onto another course we don’t know how to navigate. Sometimes we find our way through the fog by busying ourselves with all the multitude of actions accompanying a death, so it takes time for our grief and sadness to catch up to our struggle to calibrate a new reality.
As we suffer the loss of someone close to us, we are also suffering the loss of a significant part of ourselves. Every day, every year, as we get older, we are slowly losing parts of ourselves, our youth, our vitality and our access to a never-ending future full of possibilities. Our time on this planet becomes more finite as we age, but still, even knowing this, even feeling this inevitability in a myriad of ways, doesn’t fully prepare us for when a loss is absolute. Losing someone wakes us up to the realization of our own delicacy, fragility and transient time we have to be alive.
It reminds us – so starkly – that nothing is permanent, and that many things or people are gone so much sooner than we expect, wish or hope. It is such a powerful message to value each and every moment, and to be fully present and cherish the experiences with those we care about and not to take them for granted, knowing they will not last and will soon slip into memory.
Loss is always sad, frustrating, heart-breaking and disorienting. It is never easy and never the same for any two people. If we did not love and did not feel attachment, meaning and belonging, we simply would not be human. The well of our grief is a testament to the depth of our love and the preciousness of the relationships we’ve been blessed to be a part of during our short time here on Earth.
Kirsten, you’ve really hit the nail on the head when describing what grief/loss/death feels like…to me, anyway. After having experienced such a tremendous loss recently, reading your words has given me a sense of comfort, knowing that others can feel the same way. Thank you so much.
I am so sorry for your loss ❤️
I came back to reread this post. Like Elif above, I too have found Kirsten’s words very comforting. It is so easy to feel alone, as if you are the only person in the world suffering such huge invisible pain. In reality, we are never alone, we are connected to everyone by our universal human experiences.