The ties that bind us
Over the last month I’ve been thinking about loss a lot and the way it impacts us. I’ve mentioned this in earlier blog posts but I’ll reiterate it here because I believe it to be true. I think that loss is one of the only things we can even be certain of in this life and yet it is almost always something that comes as a surprise. Maybe not a literal surprise but at the minimum something you perceive as unfair, or that shouldn’t be happening. Something you can’t believe is happening. That is the cost of connection, of love, of relationships. We know what we have to lose but we push it aside because what we experience by having someone in our lives feels so wonderful that at least some part of us has to believe that maybe it can be like this, feel like this, forever.
I have more experience with the kind of death that sneaks up on you as opposed to the kind you can see coming and have to come to terms with at the same time the person is still alive. The kind that has you feeling like everything is totally fine and going according to plan one moment and completely not in the next. I also have a lot of experience with loss that hit me at a young age. When my own mother died when I was just ten years old not only did my life change but my relationships with the rest of my living family changed and also my relationship to myself. This event changed my life forever. It has never been the same for me since that day and I have never felt the same again either. That childlike, care-free, whimsical side of myself left my body and I don’t think I’ve ever fully gotten it back. My family has also never been the same since that day. My relationship with myself and my father has never been the same. I felt for many years as though my life had been suspended in that day. Yes, time had passed, I had gotten older, things had changed but I was still that lost, scared, ten year old girl sitting in that hospital room alone. Alone. I felt alone for many years after that day.
I think the first time after that that I truly felt seen by another person was when I connected with a friend of mine who had also lost their parent at a young age. We really understood each-other and he became one of my closest friends at the time. There is almost this kind of short hand you have with people who have experienced that type of loss. It fundamentally changes you and the way you look at the world. You adopt a no bull-shit attitude. Have an ability for compassion and understanding that is quite challenging for most others to cultivate. People in my experience who have experienced the loss of a parent at a young age understand how fragile life is. How important it is to say what you mean and how you feel when you feel it and to not sugarcoat things. An instant feeling of relief washes over me when I meet someone who has experienced this type of loss. Calling back a bit to the first blog post I understand that this can be a somewhat risky and easily misunderstood thing to say but it’s true for me. If we all understand that one of the things that all humans fundamentally want/need is to be understood it doesn’t get much clearer than shared experiences. I think most others who have experienced this feel the same way that I do. That ease that comes when someone tells you that they’ve also lost a parent. Understanding the strangeness that comes over you when someone asks you what they probably interpret as a pretty risk free question like: “Where do you parents live?” and always having to answer “Oh, my dad lives in Bend”, because lets be real I’m certainly not going to say (unless I’m in a particular mood) well my dad lives in Bend but my mom died with I was 10. Because then the sympathy rolls in or the questions about what happened. Only ever talking about one parent or for those who have lost both parents maybe not really knowing how to answer that question or calling back to the past in your answer.
It’s refreshing to have a conversation with someone who would never ask questions like that. It’s comforting to know that because of this shared understanding I can be more open, more fully myself, more easily understood. This type of connection with others is a huge glimmer for me. It makes me feel safe, it fills me with a certain kind of happiness, I feel peaceful and these relationships have improved my mental health substantially. To everyone who is a member of the dead parents club that has come into my life in one way or another, I’m eternally grateful for you and for our special kind of friendship we are able to share and I am so sorry that we had to become members of this club in the first place.
