Making peace with loss.

 Theres no one way to do grief. Youre not linear. Your grief is as unique as your fingerprint. The stages follow us. We dont follow them.

-David Kessler

https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/

This song happened to be playing in my You Tube mix tonight. No surprise, as I have always loved it, love Franki Valli, his voice and the way he sings a song, and just the vibe and raw emotion of that particular song. 

Nevertheless, I think it was a sign that it played exactly when it did, as I was thinking of writing this blog tonight and one line from the song grabbed me in terms of what I eventually want to say, which will come towards the end of the blog. I will highlight the line, but included the entire passage as it has to be read in context of all of it.

Till we flew into, the me and you

that went our seperate ways

my eyes adored you

though I never laid a hand on you

my eyes adored you

like a million miles away from me

you couldnt see how I adored you

so close

so close and yet so far

funny I seem to find

that no matter how the years unwind

still I reminisce

about the girl I miss

and the love I left behind

This week, a relative of mine lost his mother. I am not particularly close to him, nor was I to her, although I knew them both well and his mother was the salt of the earth type. The type not one person ever had a bad thing to say about. A real giving type. It will be a tough loss for him to deal with, as I know what its like to have to bury your parents, or anyone close like that you have known for your entire life. For as long as I have known him, and them, they have always been about family more than anything. A family gathering was a very big deal, even a small one, and now, part of that gathering will not be there. Today is my mothers birthday, so I am very aware of what it is like to reminisce about that sort of thing. My mother and I shared one very special bond. We had a birthday 4 days apart and when it was celebrated, it was always celebrated together. That is the first and last thing I always think about on my birthday and then hers. That part is now gone. The loss of that part of life.

It also got me to thinking about grief and loss, and the stages of those. I am familiar with the 5 stages, but to me,that is more about grief than loss, although grief is always some part of loss, even more a stage of that. But, I am more focused on how to deal with loss, and put it behind you. Once the grieving is over, the loss is still there. Its always been an issue for me. How to move on from loss.

Ive carried the grief of a loss that I could never get past for more than 35 years, but a recent loss has taught me that until you make true peace with all that came before the loss and then immediately what happened right after the loss, you cant attain peace. Much like in the Frankie Valli song, you just have to remember there was a time when you adored them, and for whatever reason, and generally there are many, way too many to figure out which of them was the actual reason, it just didnt work out. Its peaceful to just accept that. Peaceful to a degree you cant imagine until you do that. 

Of course, that isnt the same as losing your mother, or some other close relative, but its similar in terms of how you come to true peace. If it mattered to you, and they mattered to you, it means as much or almost as much as your parents, or a child if you lose a child. They talk about that in the video at the start of the blog if you watch that.

I think, at this point in my life, I am at the peace stage of loss. Ive made peace with the losses Ive sustained, and have let them go. To me, that is the real final stage. Letting go of the loss. There is a great amount of peace in doing that, at least for me. Its like you let go of a burden that weighs you down. 

If you watched the video above of David Kessler and the Estefan family, then you see the dynamics of how it all plays out. Differently in most of us, in various stages. But Kessler adds a 6th stage, and to me, that is peace. To him, its meaning.

He calls it meaning. I call it peace. Its basically the same thing or concept. The meaning, the reason it happened, the reason it died, the reason it didnt work, whatever the reason to the meaning, finding that for yourself helps you accept the loss, and in so doing, for me anyway, I get peace in knowing the loss had a purpose or meaning, and to just move forward from that point. Obviously, that is easier said than done, and there will be lapses and moments, but when you get to that stage, you get very peaceful about the entire thing.

If you didnt watch the video above to the entire end, Gloria Estefan and her daughter Emily created a new song based on all that, and I have posted below to conclude the blog. Its very, very moving.

Ive had a lot of trouble sleeping or falling asleep the last few weeks, and that is mostly because I carry this grief and loss than I hadnt made proper peace with. That seems to have been lifted now. Again, as I wrote in a blog last month, I write to help myself, and doing that does help. If it helps others, that is great too, and part of the reason I post these types of things. But even if no one ever reads this, it helped at least one person. Me.