The Least of Losses

I was watching a vlog and the woman speaking was telling of another major life change she was experiencing, just one of many such changes she'd experienced over the past 3 years.  She is giving up a home where she's lived and worked and which she has renovated into a space that was absolutely beautiful.  Viewers had remarked, more than once, when she first mentioned the possibility of a move, that they hated to see her give up her home.  

In the post I was watching, she spoke frankly to all of her viewers.  "This...," she said, gesturing all around her beautiful room, "...this is the very least of all the losses I've faced over the past three years.  This is nothing to cry over.  I've used my tears for bigger things."

Now there's a bit of wisdom for you.

As I look back at my life, each season I had to go through, was marked first with loss.  Loss of self, loss of purpose, loss of a role, loss of a job, loss of an innocent expectation, loss of friendship, loss of an opportunity, loss of love, loss of place.

All of those losses, seen from this side, I know now were, for the most part, the least of things.  This year marked the big loss.   I lost my husband which is a big enough lost, but I didn't realize that this loss was subtractions multiplied.  I lost roles, identities, the luxury of leaning occasionally on someone who was willing to be leaned on, but also prone to say, "Enough, get on with it now. You can do it."  Loss times loss has overwhelmed me.  

And it amazed me, too.  How could I lose this much and continue to wake each day?  To get up and move through a day doing the most ordinary things?  How could I continue to go through this life when everywhere I looked there was another loss to identify?  There are times still, very nearly seven months in of being a widow, when I walk through the same home, with the same things and yet every single thing has been altered permanently in some way.  And I am the most altered of all, though the face in the mirror looks much the same as it did in March.  Truly, it is a puzzling thing to contemplate.

I say this in October, on a rainy day when I've watched leaves shower down from the tree outside the window.  I am torn between grief at the passing of a season and wonder at the beauty of what is being revealed.  I'm aware that unless the leaves fall, and the tree is bare, there will be no new growth come Spring.  This season is a necessary season in nature.  And so it must be in my life, as well.

Loss comes long before beauty and growth. 

That's the lesson I have learned today.  Loss always comes before the new growth.

Whatever it may look like just now, the ending of so much is also a beginning of much more for anyone experiencing loss.   

Maybe the marriage doesn't break but, in this season, when disillusionment and frustration and fear has set in, it's made into a stronger one.  

Maybe the end of the job leads to a resolve to find a new career, one that rewards you with more money and more time than you can imagine just now.

Maybe the loss of a friendship leads to a stronger, better friendship, and makes you a better friend as well, with a relationship based on truth and honesty as well as compatibility.

And maybe the loss of a life partner leads to a woman who finally draws strong boundaries, a life that is richer for what was known, and a future full of possibilities and contentment.

But first, let us accept that we must let go of what keeps us tied to a past that is...well...past.  Not forgotten, not forsaken, but allowed to drift away, like the leaves. To let go of the least of the losses and wait patiently for that new season which will eventually come.