On Relationships: Connection with Loss; Endings with Beginnings; History with Biography and Identity

     "While grief does and must end, it is always there as a part of our personal history, so in this way, grief is over, but it's never over." A. Barbara Coyne: You Don't Have to Like It But You Do Have to Live It (Introduction)

Relationship of Connection with Loss

      We are--forever--connected with people, animals and things: we know them in their physical presence as we see them, touch them, laugh and cry with them, argue and resolve the issue with them. In short, the physical form of our connection is palpable. But people, animals and things are, at once, more than and different from their physical form: there is an essence that defines the uniqueness of each as well as their meaning to us. In Chapter V of my book (barbaracoyne.com), I talk about "essence" as the unique "something, that without which, the thing would not be what it is" (page 98). Some describe this essence as a spiritual sensing, a core that we can identify but cannot fully define: it is the wholeness of this palpable physical connection with the ethereal essence that creates the meaningful rhythm in the dance of living (N.B. "things" in this context does not refer to a materialistic sense of possessing things...it refers to things that connect us to others...it is why I suggest that you should not be in a hurry to "get rid of things" after a death...in spite of advice from well-meaning relatives or friends...when the person is is no longer here in the physical form, things that connected you may well offer comfort as you see/touch them, and remember).

      Post-death grief awakens us to a profound shift in wholeness of the familiar rhythm and organization of our lives, in which the person was integral. Now, we must learn to disconnect from the familiar form that we knew while shifting our focus to the connection with the etheral, abstract essence of the person, animal or thing. This learning takes time and energy and no, there is no "fast track" and it definitely is "not easy"! Eventually grief ends--as it must--but it ends only in the sense that "it is over, but it's never over". Let's explore this seemingly contradictory statement through a question posed by "Jayne", representating the many people who ponder this same question.

               Jayne's Question/Comment              Jayne's husband died two plus years ago and she wonders why she still cries, feels sad and misses him...she knows that her grief "feels different now", she has "moved on" but wonders when it will finally end. In re-reading sections of my book, she was struck by the phenomenon that I describe as "over/never over" (Introduction) and wonders what happens to the grief in the "never over period"...how will she know when it "really ends"...when will it "finally" be in the past?

     Jayne, like so many others, is caught in the eddy of that long-held belief that endings have identifiable borders marking definitive end-points. This belief creates the illusion that our lives unfold in a series of events, each with a definitive point of beginning and ending....when we arrive at an "end-point" of something, we have finally achieved the total extent of that something, relegated it to that nebulous "past" and somehow, it will never again surface. But living does not work that way: endings and beginnings interpenetrate and interact to create a seamless symphony in the dance of life.

Endings with Beginnings: A Seamless Symphony

    "In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes, so with the present time" ...

               Leonardo daVinci (1452-1519)

                 painter, sculptor, architect    

    The shifts in our constantly changing world, some barely noticeable and some deeply profound, call us to the seamless symphony of beginnings-endings and reveal to us how events interpenetrate to create an expanding tapestry of wholeness. Early this month,we celebrated Labor Day..a day that commemorated the labor movement begun some hundred years ago. Over time, this single event has also come to signal the "unoffical end of summer" and, for the past ten years has reminded us of the national wound of 9-11-01, commemorated just one week later. As these events join together with all our personal memories,we pause from our busy lives to celebrate, commemorate and remember. 

     It is in these shifting times, that memories long thought to be "over" come to the surface and we become acutely aware of the passage of time. In dwelling with the passage of time, we begin to appreciate the significance of seemingly single events as they join together, expanding our world of experience and reminding us that while an event is "over", our inner experience of it lives on in our memory bank. We absorb the logic of daVinci as we find that all our experiences in the present become "the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes". And our grief ends...in the sense that it is over...but never over.

     To the many that Jayne represents, then, the pain of grief is never over...it changes with the passage of time and within the context of our evolving biography. The wistfulness of the grief that is "never over" reminds us that life is for the living and that we honor our dead by embracing the wholeness of life's changing rhythms. So, we pause in celebrating nodal events to remember and perhaps, re-live precious moments in time. What, when and how the memories are evoked, is related to our uniquely different personal relationships and connections. It could be a birthday, anniversary or the "last barbeque of the summer" on Labor Day weekend....or something as simple as a cool, crisp September morning could just be that trigger: "......September morning...Still can make me feel that way..." (Neil Diamond, singer, songwriter).

     As we move farther from the event of a death, we come to acknowledge that we will make no new memories with the one who died so we treasure memories made and focus our energy on discovering and creating different ways to be happy. We consign memories of our dead to our personal history.

History with Biography and Identity

     Like any historical record, our personal history stores in memory the body of events that have occurred in our lives, continuously expanding this record as time moves on.The events are always there forming the framework that supports our growth in maturity, wisdom and sensitivity. It is this framework that lends structure to the identifiable pattern and continuity of our unique identity and it is our history and unfolding biography that create our shifting sense of identity: we are defined by the wholeness of the experiences that constitute our identity--not by single isolated events, no matter how profound. While the events do not change, we experience them in different ways when they surface later in the spiral of life.

     And so it is with grief, the profusion of longing, searching, confusion and incessant weeping is eventually "over". But the echo of your grief resonates over time throughout your life....your experience of it changes....there is no end-point. (This is fully explored in the Introduction and Part II of my book). Every instance of grief contributes to the complexity of the tapestry of life you are weaving as you inexorably "move on". Your biography continues to unfold wrapped in the warmth of the memories you consign to their proper place in your personal history. And in the wholeness of your integral history and unfolding biography, you choose to discover the energy that powers what is yet to be: within the work-of-grief, you learn to eventually release the pain of your grief, hold dear the memories in your history as you continue to "write the biography of your life...and you do not let your grief become your identity.

     In conclusion, grief, like all your experiences, becomes a part of who you are and gives shape to your emerging biography. Embrace your many instances of grief, learn from them the joy of living, the beauty of laughter, the possibilities revealed in sadness and above all, the wonder of connection, respecting always, the transience of all life. And remember.......

 ....."Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

          Seneca, First century philosopher

Until the next time,