Of Love and Loss

(I've recently had a pretty bad bout of writer's block and apologize to my readers (all three of you!) for my absence. However, this post has been writing itself in my head for several days now and is about to come flooding out.  For the sake of keeping my readers and being respectful of your time I may break this post into a series.) 

Loss is a part of being human.  We lose friends, we lose jobs, we lose pets, we lose our memories.   We lose people to cancer, to angry words, to old age, to moves, to divorce, to just growing up, graduating high school, and moving into adult life.   With loss comes grief.  It doesn't matter what kind of loss you have, there will be a grieving process. 

I've been thinking about this subject a lot lately for a lot of different reasons.   Its almost summertime which means my oldest daughter will be going to California for several weeks.  Her travels always make me a bit melancholy in the sense that I "lose" two months of day to day life with her.  I usually fly with her on one end of the trip and its still hard sometimes to be around the family I lost in the divorce.   My ex mother in law does a wonderful job in trying to make me feel like I still fit in and I truly believe she still loves me "as another daughter" and always will.  I'm just the estranged daughter who can only talk about the weather and recent movies we both enjoyed before things get uncomfortable. 

My brother is about to move across the ocean to another country and although I know I'll see him again it won't be the same.  Text messages don't reach "across the pond".  We'll email and we'll Skype but London just seems so very far away and I'm sad about it.

I've been having very vivid dreams always involving a man who was my boss for most of my formative years.  I left the job in 2004 and I'm not sure why I'm having trouble with it now but there's Ed, every night in some form or fashion.  Sometimes he is my boss still, sometimes he's just in the dream hanging out and contributing witty banter.   Maybe its because most of my closer co-workers are on Facebook so we are still in contact but with Ed I only get a phone call or email once or twice a year.  I miss him.   That might sound strange since he was my superior but ultimately he became family.   He saw me through a new marriage, a house purchase, a new baby, a divorce, and eventually a wedding.  I saw his kids grow from toddlers to teenagers.  We have history and I miss him.

A very dear friend of mine recently moved to Singapore.  I'm not sure I'll ever see her again and that pains me.  Singapore has never been high on my travel list and I doubt she'll ever make it back to TN.

Most of the time when we think about loss, we think of death.   My first dealing with death that I remember was when my fraternal grandmother passed away.  I remember being woken up in the middle of the night and told that she had died and that my dad was going to Chicago for the funeral.   I had met her a couple of times but due to distance we weren't close.  My next experience was with my step-grandfather, Coach.   We got that phone call while watching the Miss USA Pagent... or was it Miss Universe?   What I remember from the funeral is the limousine.  I was about 10 and it was my first time to ride in one.    My maternal grandma passed away in 1993.  I was 22.  I saw her two days before she died and knew the time was near however promised her we'd "do lunch" just as soon as she felt better.   Her funeral was at a beautiful old Catholic Church in Downtown Memphis.   I remember the stairs, the incense, and singing "On Eagle's Wings".   I remember the coat my mom wore that day.  Most of all I remember seeing her in the casket in a sweater my mom had given to her.  I remember looking at her hands and thinking how much they resembled my mom's.

The next family loss hit me harder.  My dear grandpa, my Gramps, my telephone buddy, my travel partner, my friend.   He passed away in January 2004.   I remember every detail of the phone call at 3am, the next morning, the visit to the funeral home to plan the service and my insistence that yes, he really did want Vince Gill and Elvis to be played.  I remember the shock on my mom's face, the arrival of relatives, the laughter at the funeral home during the viewing (laughter?), the military funeral with full honors - the folding of the flag and presentation to my mom, his oldest child.  I remember the food afterwards that my new friends from my very new church family had been kind enough to deliver along with paper plates and plastic forks.   I still think about him every day.   I wish he could see my red headed baby.   I wish he could see my beautiful young "Karo" as he called her.  I wish he'd had the chance to get to know my husband better.  I wish he could give me his thoughts on Lady Gaga!  Its been 6 years and I'm still grieving my Gramps.   I smile when I think of him but there are days when I still tear up too.  There is no time limit on grief.   It is a process and everyone deals with it in their own way.

I think where I'm going here is that each loss is different and each person touched me in their own way.  My fraternal grandma left me with a lot of costume jewelry and a few personal handwritten letters I will always cherish.  Coach left me with a respect for sports, the handicapped (he lost both legs to cancer and was wheelchair bound) and a reminder that cigarettes kill.  My grandma left me with a love for poetry, a wonderful memory of making gingerbread houses, and a healthy fear of the alcoholism gene. And my Gramps left me with too much to post here.   The common denominator between all of them though was that they all loved me.  They all shared in my life and shaped who I am today and who I will become tomorrow.

Loss is one of the most difficult things we humans endure.   However when you look at the big picture, the reason that loss is so painful is because love is almost always involved.  It literally breaks our hearts when we lose people we love.  So how do we endure that heartache?   We take the love those people filled our hearts with and we pass it on to others.   That's what this life is about.  Its all about love.   The loss helps us appreciate the love.   The human body dies.   It will happen to everyone at some point.   Love though... love never dies.