Loss and Grief
I have experienced much death over the last few months and I would like to share some feelings on it.
I have heard people say that when someone dies, a part of us goes with them. Honestly, I think that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Think about it; that means a part of us dies each time we lose someone. I have lost many friends, including a boyfriend when I was 19, one of my best friends to ALS years ago, a very close friend last month who died of Covid-19, my sister in law who was also my best friend a few years back, several cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, my parents and I just lost my brother last week. If part of me dies with them, what is left alive inside me? Wouldn’t a lot of me be dead?
It does FEEL like we lose a bit of ourselves when people die. We FEEL like a part of us dies because we are grieving and the loss is overwhelming. But we are not; actually when we experience death, it helps us to live. It reminds us that we are alive and that our time on earth is limited. For some of us, me included, it helps me focus on what is important in my life.
Everyone deals with loss and grief differently. Some cry, some get angry, some depressed, some stay in denial and some feel all the seven stages of grief all at once. And after a while, life returns up to a point to the routine it was before the death we experienced.
I have found that most people do not want to talk about death. I never understood that because just as anything in our lives, any part of our lives, death is a part of us. We will all die eventually and I have come to understand that it is simply another stage we go through. Our physical form dies and our spirit returns to where it came from. As Sundance says, we go home.
I have experienced a great loss this last week when my brother passed away. We are a very close knit Italian family. We are as close in our 60s as we were as kids. We have never lost the family bond and we look forward to spending time together. We get together to celebrate birthdays and holidays and do activities together. We are on a bowling league with three family teams. We own a cottage on a river together. You get the idea. As my brother Steve always said, you cut one of us, we all bleed.
Steve was sick for over 40 years. He was diagnosed with Crohns disease at 24. At 27, he died. Twice. He was revived and had multiple surgeries, leaving him with less than 18 inches of intestine to live with. Through the years, the disease took its toll, damaging his kidneys to the point where the last 11 years, he was on dialysis. He had two heart attacks in the last ten years because of the dialysis taking its toll on his body. You get the idea, it is a domino effect when one part of your body shuts down, another is affected and so on. One thing about Steve was that he never complained about being disabled. He said he might not have had kids if he had not gotten sick and decided he wanted a family.
I had another friend, the one who passed away a month ago. My friend Rick was just getting out of college and was playing basketball for the NBA. At 23 years old he was in a car accident, not a serious one, but a freak accident. Another friend was driving, and they veered off the road and went into a ditch. Because of Rick’s height, he hit is head heard on the top of the car when it bounced (I use bounced for lack of a better word) into the ditch, and broke three bones in his neck. He was paralyzed from the chest down after that. Rick never complained either. He was an artist and went on to work for the NBA as an artist, painting pictures of Larry Bird, Michael Jordan (he actually worked for Michael Jordan for two years), Charles Barkley, and many other famous players. He always said he wouldn’t change his life because the opportunities he had would not have materialized if it had not been for his accident.
When we accept what life gives us without complaint; when we accept the path we are on with the gratitude of the gifts we have, we can live the best life we can; the happiest life we can. And when we die, we leave the legacy of lessons we taught and love that we created for others.
Death always gets me thinking about life. I rarely think of one without the other. Death looms out there for each of us, and I often reflect on how I live each day. Am I doing myself justice living a happy life? Do I take care of those around me? Do I touch people’s hearts and share kindness and love? And when I reflect on things, I know these feelings are what I am grieving when someone dies. Not that they have moved on and gone home. That is natural. What I grieve is the loss of their physical presence in my life. Their smiles, their jokes, what they gave to my heart. Grief can be overwhelming, so to deal with the grief and loss, I connect to their spirit. I talk to them when something happens that reminds me of them. I ask them to look in from time to time and watch over each of us. And yes, I yell at them when I get angry. Just as I yell at God when I get angry. It doesn’t take the grief and loss away, but it lets me continue that connection with them in the only way left to me; spiritually.
The loss we feel, (I feel) leaves a hole where that person lived in us. No one else can fill that hole except them. They, and everyone else we love, have special places in our hearts. I have heard people at funerals say, “I had a special relationship with that person”. For me, every relationship is special. And when the physical relationship ends, whether it is in death, divorce, or just the end of a relationship, it creates sadness and grief for the loss of feelings and experiences and love that you shared and that were unique to that person.
So when they died, those incredible relationships in my life were gone. I am not angry that they died. Everyone dies. I will die too. Not today, but some day when it is time for me to go home, I will make the journey back home. But until that time I can honor their memories, all those incredible souls that left my life, by living the most honest and loving life I can. By never settling for anything that doesn’t create happiness in my life; never settling for something I don’t want; never settling for something that isn’t amazing, because each person who has touched my life has made it amazing.
And when it is my time to go home, I can only hope I have lived the example of those that passed before me and that I have touched other people’s lives in an amazing way.
-Butch