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“Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.” – Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist
“People living deeply have no fear of death.” – Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anaïs Nin, Volume Two
“Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs — the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
“I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind — and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.” – William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.” – Helen Keller
A capsule of my thoughts on loss would be: it looks like yes, but is probably in the bright light of honesty a case of mistaken identity.
Obviously, as we grow older our appearance and health are eroded; and most people know that this is inescapable. And friends come and then they go, because our lives change or because they die...and it seems that most people reach a point where in any numerical sense, at least, these and other things are not replaced. And everything we have wears out, though granted some of it will outlast us, but it won't last forever. And on it goes.
So, it looks like that ticking clock is right. But I wonder if it is, or if we have misunderstood some basic facts of life...have been taught to misunderstand them, I should say. Essentially nothing lasts, but how is it that all of us ignore such a basic truth when it is always in front of our eyes?
I think we are educated into the idea that "to have" something, means the same as owning it. And as that basic error is slipped into our little heads very early on, we have a wretched time getting rid of it. If having things in life (friendships, health, possessions, you name it) is seen like ownership; then more honestly all these things are more on the order of "borrowed." We don't get to keep them, because they don't belong to us...we don't, in fact, own them. On the other hand, even as we lose much or most of what is borrowed, we do normally, I think, also have new things (new borrowings) come into our lives...though there is clearly no one to one replacement rule. And if we expect there is, or should be, then we are really in emotional hot water!
And eventually that most basic of borrowed things, our physical life, goes away.
So, if we see human life as winning at the game and getting to keep the prizes, then, clearly, everyone is a loser when the whistle blows at the end of the game. Because that whistle doesn't just means "game over," it means ALL over. And if death is somehow perceived as a Big Cheat, and everyone gets cheated, perhaps our idea of living a life is habitually framed in terms that don't make much sense.
I think the problem of loss, is in large measure a problem of us being miseducated into believing that this entirely obvious process is somehow wrong and unfair, rather than simply the way things are. And once we are sent off marching through life with that foot forward, we habitually compound the difficulty of change as we move through life.
I have been a fan of your thoughtful posts for a long time, but the above stands out for its depth of thinking and analysis which is rather rare on City-Data. Hats off!
Brightdoglover, I like your post, thanks for sharing it. I know this may sound contrived, but people come and go in your life for a reason, whether they are family or friends. Losing a close friend can be difficult to deal with for whatever the reason. Within the past year, I found a very close friend from college had died a few years ago. I had no idea it happened until researching online to get back in touch. I still grieve thinking about it.
And just this year, I recently lost a relationship with a friend from school. We had gotten in touch a few times and did some things together in recent years, but for whatever reason we are at different stages of our lives. After a year or 2, it hurts my feelings that this person will not return my calls or reply to my emails, but there is a reason I am being avoided or ignored.
What I try to do is treasure the good times we had and move on, but it can be very hard to put that long distanced past completely behind you.
Rocking my grandtwins to sleep at my house yesterday, I gazed at a framed photo of the infant I lost when he was 2. Great joy and sorrow all at once. No way to express how complicated that feels.
Life is filled with joy and pain. The young usually do not know this.
The older we get the more loss we're going to experience. It's an inevitable truth of life. In mine, the previous two generations have all disappeared. What remains is a half-uncle 10 years my senior and a skip generation at best, my own generation in which I'm the oldest by a half dozen years and the two upcoming generations. When my uncle has "slipped the surly bonds of Earth" I will find myself in the unenviable position of being the de facto patriarch of my clan of our surname. Then its members will likely be anticipating the day that is sure to come when I pass the patriarchal mantle to the next in line.
While not truly cognizant of it, perhaps it's this inevitability of loss that has, to some extent, constrained my entering into lasting friendships outside of close family. At this writing and but for my wife I have only one person I consider a true and lasting friend and we've known one another for only a handful of years. Beyond that I have a goodly number of acquaintances and six of them have died in the past 18 months. While I mourn those losses as they occur, they do not strike as hard as the loss of a friend would and the grieving is soon over with but for sympathy for their survivors. I then, and as brightdoglover expressed, "consciously focus on the future."
I often wonder which loss is worse; the finality of loss due to a death or the loss of friendships made throughout our lives. I have experienced many of the latter, mostly due to time and distance and what I consider normal growing apart, but whatever the reason, they can be hurtful and perhaps more so than a death because they aren't inevitable yet occur nonetheless.
I'm not sure there's any coherence whatsoever in this but these are my thoughts on loss as a part of the aging process.
Facing and looking forward I revel in each day because life is good and well worth the living of it. More loss may occur before my own but that is not what I choose to dwell upon. I'm happy living my life and when the end of it comes, as it will in its own good time, I hope my last thoughts will be on what has been and I'll find comfort in them.
I have been thinking a lot about the losses I and other people have as we get older, and how to handle this. Of course, losing people elder to me are expected but that doesn't make it less sad because it's "normal." I imagine one coping mechanism, one that melds with acceptance, is related to family, if one has family (older or younger). You lose elders, new ones arrive. You can, while grieving or sad about a loss, consciously focus on the future, on those things or people that look forward, not only backward.
Have you ever read Necessary Losses, by Judith Viorst? You may enjoy it...
The Bestselling Classic on Love, Loss, and Letting Go
In Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst turns her considerable talents to a serious and far-reaching subject: how we grow and change through the losses that are an inevitable and necessary part of life. She argues persuasively that through the loss of our mothers' protection, the loss of the impossible expectations we bring to relationships, the loss of our younger selves, and the loss of our loved ones through separation and death, we gain deeper perspective, true maturity, and fuller wisdom about life. She has written a book that is both life affirming and life changing.
I...
And eventually that most basic of borrowed things, our physical life, goes away.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marcopolo
Life is filled with joy and pain. The young usually do not know this.
Kevku, your post resonates with me because I am a Buddhist by inclination, if not by active practice. We raised our son knowing these principles but not pressing them. He ended up largely atheist I think, now 33 years old.
He had experienced the loss of grandparents in the past, but just this year, he has lost one friend (to suicide), and is about to lose another to cancer. It makes my heart break listening to him talking about these experiences, but I'm proud of him because he's facing this latest imminent loss straight on--visiting him, helping out at home. These losses are what makes us strong, and I'm happy that he can look them in the eye.
Hemophilia is the greatest thief in my life. It is beyond me how my Grandma could face yet another day after living long enough to bury three of her four children.
Like Ghostly1 suggested, it is difficult to make new friends so in the end, I never had the Grandma I wanted and needed to help me understand why Daddy left me and my brother. I so needed her love but the wall was too high and thick to get through to her. Please don't do this the people who need you most. The last lesson we can teach our family is how peacefuly let go.
During Christmas and New Years season one thing I have noticed in family and friends is traditions live on tho those involved have passed. For Christmas always bake cookies/ candies for family and friends and have great time in sessions with family .We also are now making cabbage rolls in mass for entire family and friends .I have observed this in friends .Even tho it brings memories of relatives passed; its memories that bring joy; not sadness. I sometimes think its almost like they are here among us as no one gets sad at listening to past stories of things that occurred in these sessions.I also notice that their share is still made and passed on to others such as newer friends .Just a thought that occurred to me at time.
It's interesting that even though everyone goes through loss, and even though all things die and have died for millions of years... still, we essentially have no answers.
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