A Transition - The Second Loss
Grief is such a fantastic teacher. It is a complex thing, with ebbs and flows, deep caverns, and spacious open space. It is a prism of dark colors, yet it can offer bright radiance if you stay with it long enough. I never thought I would want to honor grief in such a manner, as it has been a torturous partner in my life. Yet, it has shown me how deep my heart can be and how much it can hold.
It’s been almost seven years since my life was shaken off its path with the sudden and unexpected loss of my boyfriend, Manny. To say it "rocked me to my core" is an understatement. The loss of someone close to you can have a profound way of recalibrating life priorities. Or at least it did for me. It caused instability in how I looked at everything I thought was stable. It had me looking at the mortality of myself and the others I hold dear. It had me grasping for an essence of control yet realizing that trying to control things is like attempting to hold water. As the saying goes, “The only thing in life that is constant is change."
I have learned from my grief experience in many profound ways. I have lost a few other individuals since Manny's passing, reminding me over and over to appreciate the moments we have, as they are fleeting. I have helped support others through their own grief process, finding a deep inner power of compassion and holding I didn't know existed within me before. Each time, I discover I can dig deeper and hold more without drowning in sorrow. As time has passed, my grief has not lessened, yet I have more capacity and growth around the wounded part of my heart. I feel more human and willing to open my heart to others. While other times, I feel more scared to open my heart up. I get afraid my heart will become entwined again, and I will lose that person and then myself into grief once more. And yet that fear has made me feel love more deeply, in a way I didn't know was possible. The risk is so palatable, causing me to tear up and choke up even thinking about it. I can feel the sadness in every blood cell and nerve ending. Yet the reward is a deep, passionate love for those around me, even the most casual friend, the neighbor's cute puppy, or the random hummingbird flittering from here to there. It feels a bit cliché, but I appreciate the sunrises and sunsets a little more than before.
And then, just a few weeks ago, after many heavy emotional years, I experienced an interesting shift. I was driving home one evening, and something felt lighter in my body. A song on the radio reminded me of one specific evening drive with Manny in his jeep, doors off, roaring through the suburbs of Boston. I smiled and realized I was ready to let the heaviness of it all go.
I am still trying to find the right words to properly articulate what I am experiencing. I am not sure I have them yet, but it most definitely is a transition. In helping me to describe this experience, my dearest friend asked me how it felt in my heart and body. My heart feels very sad yet full and light. It doesn't feel that twisting, stabbing, griping sadness. It feels deeper, almost mature if that makes any sense, and without tension. It just is sad, grounded sadness…. like a sadness in the deep ocean rather than in the crashing waves of the shore. My body, however, feels much lighter. A 230lb weight has been lifted off my shoulder and chest. My body feels flexible and loose, without the same tension as before.
In sharing this observation with my own coach, he teared up and shared an understanding that he could relate. He called it the "Second Loss". He experienced it with the loss of his mother. As he explained, the initial grief (the torment, the pain, the profound loss) stays with us for however long we need it. It ebbs and flows, comes and goes. And then, when we are ready, it transitions. Yet, the second loss can be as profound and sharp, as you let the deep hurt go. It’s not that you move on and no longer feel grief again. No….that will continue to come and go. But from what I am currently experiencing, it feels like letting go of the need to carry it everywhere. It's the letting go of the guilt I assigned to it. What guilt?
The guilt of forgetting how he sounded when he laughed.
The guilt of his birthday coming and not remembering all the weeks leading up to it.
It's the guilt of worrying about how his family or friends might feel as I try to move on with my life.
It's the guilt of loving again and finding even more happiness than I did with him.
It’s letting go of the need to have his loss define me and freeing me to redefine myself in a new way.
It's the permission to hold deep love and care for his memory and also being okay with creating new memories that have nothing to do with him.
Since observing this transition into this second loss, I am grateful for the work I have been doing to allow my emotions to be with me. I have cried more in the last few weeks than in the previous few years. It's a subtle cry, allowing tears to roll down my face whenever needed without trying to control the time and place. It’s not the ugly, breath-catching sobbing that happened in the early years, but a soft, loving sadness that releases just enough to remind me I loved and missed him. And then it passes. The sadness is subtle yet palatable and graceful in its own way. And I am finding I am grateful for it.
I wanted to share my experience through this ongoing, new phase I am transitioning through, even though I am not sure it makes any sense. I am learning that, for me, grief is ever-evolving. Hearing from others about their experiences and how they articulate them has been helpful. It has also been beneficial for me to help support others as they go down their own path, especially when it is so raw and new. I spent much of my own grief experience alone, not sharing, ashamed, and annoyed at myself. However, once I started to share with others, I found a rewarding and supportive community.
I’ll end with the idea that grief and its evolution is a very human experience. And we all share this experience at some point, though our individual experiences might vary. To share in community is a human right and privilege. In many cultures, outside of the mainstream Western way of being, grief is a right of passage filled with rituals and traditions that help offer support, guidance, and acceptance. In our Western American culture, many of us have moved very far away from this. Grief has become almost shameful, with expectations of time limits, deadlines, and pressure to push through and move on as quickly as possible. It makes many uncomfortable to see others grieve because we simply don't have the practices to bring context and compassion to the process. We think in linear terms when we need to shift to more of a way of "being with" instead.
The English poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) said, "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." This came from one of Tennyson's most ambitious poems, a long elegy he wrote for the death of a friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in 1833 at 22 years old. With just this one line, part of In Memoriam A. H. H, a collective of 133 shorter lyric poems that made up the long elegy, Tennyson tapped into the essence of grief and the polarity of life. To love more deeply, you must also have the opposite, darker side…the experience of loss. Just like if we want to appreciate the sunlight, we must have the dark night.
Transitions are complex, no matter what they are. Transitions can bring you crucial clarity if you can get through the uncertainty and liminality of it all. Life is a giant transition through a billion little transitions. Yes, there is pain and anxiety, even fear. And there are also lessons to be learned and rewards to be revealed along the way. The more we stop exerting so much and trust in being with the process, the more we might be surprised by what we can discover.
