Sometimes loss may be a positive thing. If you’re an athlete, for example, and your team loses, you learn from any mistakes, regroup, practice harder and come back better. Sometimes loss can be a proverbial bullet dodged. I’ve lost the bid on projects before to find out later that the client would have been a horrible fit if we’d won the project. Losing a job can often open a door for an even better job to come along. Sometimes when one door closes, another one literally opens. If you’re striving to lose weight, losing it is definitely a positive one. So there are plenty of positive ways to reframe loss.
When it comes to the biggest losses in life, it is infinitely more difficult to reframe them in a positive light. I heard someone recently say that you don’t “get over” loss, you live with it. You don’t “get over” the pain that comes with loss, you accept that it is part of your life in order to move on. This person was talking about the loss of a child and said when she accepted that the pain will be there for the rest of her life, that acceptance actually allowed her to move on with life.
It is emotional turmoil when a loved one dies. I often use the metaphor of feeling like a ghost ship, without a crew, being tossed around on the sea. Your “hull” gets patched and you’re able to stay afloat. Over time, you adapt, you gain back some “crew” and start to navigate the waters.
The way I look at it, through big loss, your empathy grows. I’ve lost track of how many other people I’ve talked with about the loss of my spouse and, more recently, the loss of my dad, and the other person can sadly relate. It’s not something I like having in common with someone else, just because of the nature of it, but when I do, I find that it leads to automatic empathy for the other person.
Losing loved ones has also shown me just what it means to truly be present for someone in their months, days, and hours of need. With Mario, when it was very clear he was not going to recover his health, I didn’t want to face it as much as he didn’t want to face it. In a way, I faced it for both of us because when it got to the very end, he was physically and mentally not himself. He was not conscious in the last 24 hours, but I remained by his side.
I often look back through time to a younger version of myself who knew nothing of what was to come. Back then, I didn’t much think of big loss because I just didn’t have the experience of it. I also had the folly of youth on my side–living more in the moment and not thinking too much of the future. I didn’t know I had it in me to be the “strong” one who could weather the storm of an all-night death bed vigil, or deal with the monumental to-do list of a widowed person. But here I am. As much as the pain of my loss will be forever a part of my life, I have the strength to carry on.
Loss is something we all deal with. It connects us all. How we deal with it is individualized, but I do agree that the pain of loss never fully goes away. When there is love and strong positive emotions associated with a spouse, family member or friend, I think expecting that to just “go away” or completely dissipate over time is unrealistic. Even when people “move on”, get married, have other children, form new friendships, you always remember the ones loved and lost.
