A wave of loss in the headlines
The last few weeks the world has lost some bright lights. Dolly Parton. Wendell Berry (if you haven’t yet been touched by his work, read on. I’ve included some of his beautiful wisdom below.) Gloria Steinem. People who made a mark on this world by being exactly who they were; by caring so deeply about the things they cared about that they influenced people they didn’t even know to care too.
In the same few weeks, less well-known lights have also gone out – or at least gone private. Two wonderfully individual and generous souls with whom I’ve gone to church for years and years died. My friends lost their truly one-of-a-kind dog. And my favorite meteorologist who I’ve watched since I returned from my honeymoon 30+ years ago retired! While you may be laughing a little that I included that last loss in this litany, in my heart, it is similar. Someone whose light has warmed my life will no longer be doing so – and I will miss them all.
Less intimate loss leaves you some space to reflect
For someone like me, who has experienced a great deal of intimate loss in a very short time, this little burst of more tangential loss is a noticeably different experience. While each of these losses have left a mark on my heart, even in the immediate wake of learning that these people will no longer be in my life, there is space to reflect on them. In other words, I’m not so overwhelmed by heartbreak that I cannot think about these people and their bright lights with gratitude, affection and admiration.
Barbara Kingsolver’s words in her obituary for Wendell Berry that was published in The New York Times are helpful as I try to sort out the difference in the way I feel. In the first days of grieving a loved one, she writes, “we are sodden with deprivation and the loss itself.” She goes on, relying on Berry’s own words from his poem, The Loved Ones, “it is only with time that ‘the loved ones we call dead’ return as their full selves into our memories and dreams ….” No matter how meaningful these people were, because they danced around the edges of my life, it doesn’t take so long for me to be able to see clearly what they were to me; for them to again be their full selves in my mind.
My life will continue to be brightened by these “lost” lights
With peripheral losses like this, I’m not so subsumed by the heartbreaking certainty that the world is a dimmer place because these lost loved ones are no longer in it. Rather, I have fairly quickly come to the wonderful realization of how bright the world and my life was, is, and will continue to be because these bright souls were part of it.
This realization offers a surprising shot of hope. Hope that this is the destination of any grief journey – no matter how seismic the loss. That we will see, as the dust of our emotions settles and we become used to the new arrangement of our life, how deeply “the loved ones we call dead” touched our lives and our hearts. That we will come to a place where thinking of them fills our heart with gratitude for having known them and leaves a smile on our lips. That because we are changed by having witnessed their light, they are not dead.
What if the same is true for you and me? What if our light will also shine on?
The last few weeks have emphasized to me a truth that most people quite studiously avoid. Here in this world, lights that shine will go out. That includes yours and mine. For me, a surprising gift of this spurt of losses (the ones that made the headlines and the ones that didn’t) is that I’m somehow filled with a little less existential dread or fear about the fleetingness of life.
Had I not been able to read the beautiful tributes written about Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry and Gloria Steinem, I might have wondered about the impact that one little life can have on this world of ours. Had I not been able to feel my other more personal losses in a way that made space for continuing to witness their light even in the midst of their absence, I might have continued to wonder what it’s all for.
Thanks to witnessing these lights, however, I find myself instead wondering – indeed marveling – that “‘the fragment of the earth // that is now me’ is just passing through.”[1] And that because this “fragment” has shined for those I love and maybe for a few people I don’t even know, it feels possible somehow (maybe … perhaps …) that my light, like the bright lights I’ve just written about, will continue to shine even after I am gone.
Now that is a reason for hope.
The fear of death (abhinivesa) (YS 2.9) is the most challenging of the five causes of human suffering (known as the kleshas in Sanskrit) from which to extricate ourselves. As I described above, it’s hard to get any real perspective on death when it typically comes freighted with the massive and enduring emotions of grief. It took a “serendipitous” turn of events like the headline making deaths of some really good folks to lead me a little closer to developing some peace around the fact that my life will come to an eventual end as everyone else’s does. In other words, I am starting to understand that my death does not mean that my light will go out.
[1] This is also from Barbara Kingsolver’s obituary for Wendell Berry referenced above.