Love and Death

   Out of countless experiences in life two of the most dynamic are love and death. They both change us in a way that is essential--our very ESSENCE is never the same after our first kiss of both.

      The past two years as I have been living through the death of family and the death of love relationships, I can not help but see how my process of grieving for both is almost identical.

  My first inkling of this came when I was flying home for the funeral of my aunt a few months after an incredible heartbreak. I felt terrible because I was more wrapped up in the pain of my lost relationship than I was in the death of my close relative. I realized that the death of a relationship, in its own way, is as profound a loss as the death of a relative. Yet many times we don't give ourselves time to mourn. We rush to move on and often try to bury our pain in a new relationship while working through grief. We judge ourselves for not being 'over it' , but the relationships we create are in every way but literal physical form,  living, breathing 'lovechildren,' and to suffer the loss of them triggers pain and grief akin to death.

          Let us start at the birth of our lovechild. When you meet someone there is immediately something present, a chemistry or energy that is the original seed of creation but also something other than you or your partner. When the seed is planted and both parties agree to contribute to its growth, suddenly it solidifies as it's own separate identity. The thing between you and your partner is not solely you or your partner, rather it is it's own perfect combination of what you have created together. It is in a very real sense an individual energy of what lies between you two. This lovechild is sometimes called, 'Us' or 'We' or 'Brangelina'  but for now let us call it 'YouMe.'

         YouMe lives to be different ages and we watch it grow with joy and bafflement, and trepidation of screwing it up. Much like any parent, we subconsciously throw our deepest neurosis at it, while consciously thinking we are 'protecting' our lovechild. And one day our worst fears are realized,  tragedy strikes, and YouMe is killed. Maybe it only lived to be 3 months old, maybe 9, maybe 20 years old. But when YouMe dies, we as  parents deal with the death through our own process of grieving.

    *just in from my googling efforts, the 7 stages of Grief*

Shock or Disbelief
Denial
Bargaining
Guilt
Anger
Depression
Acceptance and Hope  

   A year and a half and five funerals later, rather than berating myself for silliness of intensity at the loss of my love relationships while dealing with the death of my father and aunt, I have forgiven myself by realizing the death of YouMe is every bit as real as any other. Granted some people's YouMe is like a cat with 9 lives, but for everyone who dives into the truth of an ending, the stages begin.

        I find myself in the final three stages as I mourn my father and the YouMes of the past two years. I am struggling to find the Acceptance and Hope. If google tells me it is the final stage it must exist and I have faith my personal resurrection will soon come to pass. Lately there have been brief moments of pure light. They randomly pop out of the fog of 'should haves' and 'could have beens.'

      I realize I have been disrespecting the very integrity of my lovechild by trying to discount it's beauty. It is like I have been obsessively pouring over the baby book looking at the most luminous pictures of YouMe trying to make it somehow less beautiful. Angrily I think 'well in this picture YouMe has his father's nose, and I don't think I ever liked his nose. YouMe was really not that amazing.' I convince myself that somehow denying the best parts of YouMe will make the pain less.

     I stumbled upon 'Acceptance and Hope' tonight when I brought out a picture of YouMe for a friend who is about to have another lovechild. She is terrified as we all are when we have endured the pain of loss and realize we now have something again we don't want to lose.  I instinctively told her a story of the birth of one of mine. And there I was suddenly looking at the most beautiful amazing child, perfect in the moment of creation. Just like that I understood. Healing is valuing every moment you had with YouMe. The lessons gained from even the painful ugly moments of parenting. Letting go begins with treasuring the experience of YouMe, not attempting to discount it. For denying any part of the relationship is denying part of yourself.

       Tonight I did not resent the empty space in my life without YouMe. I did not think sadly of how it went from being so prodigious to the bones of now. I held the picture of YouMe tonight and marvelled at the incandescence of that moment when anything was possible. When we held hands at a waterfall that looked like heaven on earth and understood that second was to be treasured because it would never happen the same way again; when we decided against all the false starts and bumps that we wanted to try an 'Us' while picking out sheets at Ross; when we welcomed a 'We' in passionate love-scapades. In that moment when YouMe's eyes sparkle again and my heart breaks with the beauty as my mind says 'thank you, thank you, thank you,' I am beginning to heal.

Dancing about Architecture

   I watched a movie today that made me cry. Not difficult considering I am a total sap. I cried at The Lion King. All I really have to do is imagine the pain the other person is feeling and poof! I am crying. Pain has it's value, but I am no masochist. Generally pain triggers intense growth. I used to foolishly worry that I had not experienced enough tragedy in my life to be a good actor. God was up there laughing, and said 'ok, really? I can arrange for that.' After one of the most painful years of my life I am reflecting on how this pain has changed me. I have undeniably grown, shifted, transformed. Life has a way of taking the malleable material of us and subjecting it to all different weathers, circumstances.....it effects us and we are left scraped, weathered, dented. But we still have a hand in our own creation. We can take the scratched metal and make modern art, the weathered sea glass and make jewelry. Everything is perception.
   I looked at a picture of myself at 25 when I was in my last relationship. All I could think was how incredibly young I looked. It seems like another lifetime. I felt like I was looking at a girl, and undeniably at some point last year I became a woman. I can't even tell you exactly what is was that changed but I had that realization driving home in my car. People talk casually about a 'loss of innocence' and create 'rites of passage' to try and define the transition from child to adult. Ultimately that indefinable moment belongs only to the individual.  Maybe this shift happens when something is so broken you have no choice but to rebuild it, to make your art, recreate yourself. There are a few moments in my life when I have felt completely broken. The first time my heart was broken by a friend, the first time my heart was broken by a lover, and the first time my heart was broken by death. Kahlil Gibran says "How can my heart truly be open when it has never been broken?" It is easy to love when you have no idea of the consequences and have never experienced pain. To love after being broken requires bravery and wisdom. To laugh again, to play again, after so much sadness, that is real growth.
           I am still trying to find that wisdom. I realized about a month ago it has been awhile since I have laughed, really laughed. After last year all I want to do is laugh and play. It still seems easier to cry, like my body is now more conditioned to a teary response. I am not naive enough to think that life won't deal me more blows... but if I can make the laughter come easy now, I will understand I am capable of it. Pain may bring growth but real wisdom comes with learning to laugh after the pain and perhaps eventually even in the pain. 
        Laughter; you have to just experience it. I think it is something rather silly to talk about.....there is a line in a movie "Talking about love is like dancing about architecture. You just can't do it." I think the same could be said of this blog and me attempting to talk about laughter or the transition of child to woman. But here I am doing just that because it is within our nature to communicate. So I am going to end it with some wise words from a conversation with a very dear friend of mine who healed me in ways I will endlessly appreciate.
        "It is why our mouths are shaped the way they are, because we want to communicate. If you are born in a country with a language you will learn to speak it. We want to communicate our hopes and fears to each other. It used to be you could go to a neighbor or anyone in a community and they would do their best to help you out because it is in the best interest of the community. Now we are starved for community so we find our therapists in bartenders, and cab drivers, we pay them to listen."
     Or we just post a blog.