Love, Loss, and Healing

Have you ever watched something really sad?

I have been really into Army Wives lately, and I think it has more to offer than just entertainment. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it is a scripted, ideal life situation. Even so, it offers me lessons of how to deal with the harder things in life, like losing someone very close to you.

The episodes that I have been watching lately have to do with the death in one of the main families, The Holdens. The daughter, Amanda, is killed in a tragic bombing. Often the episodes end with this dramatic change in tone and all of sudden one of the surviving family members is reminded of this great loss and I find myself crying right along with them.

This was my experience just a few minutes ago as I watched the mother and sister characters walk into the rebuilt place where the bombing occurred. The sister broke down and began coming to terms with the loss of her sister after fighting with the guilt of being happy throughout the entire episode.

I think there are so many real life implications here and the biggest one is that these things that we spend our time with, whether it's television, music, reading, whatever, give us an outlet to express emotions. I can relate to this situation of losing someone near to me in a swift, unexpected, moment. No goodbye, no warning. In my case a phone call changed everything. And now every time I do something that reminds me of him, my heart aches at the very least and at times I find myself bawling at the oddest of times.

The great struggle that we see in my silly analogy, but also in real life, is that we struggle with guilt when we're happy. Every time I smile, laugh, act goofy, and so on, I feel guilty. He died in pain, in the wee hours of the morning, with no one to hear his last words. Yes, he lived his life, but is it fair of me to go on living when he's gone? This is my tension.

I think if he were here there would be no question, and further more he'd be angry if I weren't living or if I were stuck in this constant suspended state between happiness and guilt vs. being stagnant. Ideally, we grow, change, feel love, pain, happiness, and all sorts of things, and in the process the ones we may have lost are not forgotten. Their memory is honored in how we live our lives well.

I honor him everyday by living my life proud of who I am and where I come from. I live in honor of him by doing right by myself, my future, and whatever future family I might have. I hear all the time how proud of me he was and I never really knew this because he was a man of few words, but I live my life in honor of him by doing things that would make him proud. And if I feel happiness along the way I think it makes him feel more proud to know that I am living and carrying on his spirit through my life.

My greatest regret is not saying goodbye. There was this moment where I almost demanded to be taken to the airport to get a plane a few days before he died, but I didn't because it was finals and I felt like God was going to let him hold on. I was so angry at God when he died just a few hours before I got home. I realize  now that in a sense I don't have to say goodbye.

He died at home, in the house where his children grew, in the house where I have memories, and in the house I continue to visit today. His ashes were spread in the yard behind this home and it is as if he is part of the home and part of our lives in every way. I have chosen to honor that home with his memory by believing that he is there and that though his body died on that horrible day nearly three years ago, his life lives on through me, his family, and his home.

I hope you can find ways to deal with your loss in similar ways. I know that my journey to this kind of closure has been a long road and it hasn't been easy. Find your outlet to begin that journey and then don't be afraid to express those emotions. If I hadn't started writing while those tears were rolling down my face just now, these words would have never crossed my mind much less made it to this page. Sometimes that raw emotion we are so afraid of brings healing. Sometimes that lack of control, that uncertainty, brings hope, peace, and sometimes even joy.

For all the ones we've lost and all the ones we still have. To love and to healing.