On the worthiness of loss

In the first two months of the year, two people I love dearly left this earth: my grandmother and my friend. Their lives (and deaths) were vastly different and also, there were some noteworthy common threads. I miss them both.

Writing helps me work through my thoughts, and writing for an audience tends to be helpful for my process, so here I am.

More than a decade ago, I took some students on an overnight trip, and we were present for a catastrophic event in which a student from a different school died. I can only speak from my own recollections, and I want to lead with a heart broken for the many, many people affected deeply by the events of that evening, most especially that student’s family.

I had a small group of students and we weren’t that far from home, so we were able to load up and leave as soon as we had our wits about us. We had about an hour in the car together. Much of it was quiet. I remember a few conversations: I told them that this would feel really bad for a long time, and that friends at school probably wouldn’t understand why and may even be frustrated with us or ask insensitive questions. I asked them to try to stay patient with their friends. One of them asked me, “What if I dream about this?” and I didn’t have an answer. There was a lot of silence.

I knew about some of that because when I was in high school, a former softball teammate from another school was killed in an accident, and a friend at my school didn’t know what to do with me and my grief, and frankly I didn’t know what to do with me either.

Anyway, when we got back to town, my students’ parents were there waiting, as were school administrators. Lots of big hugs. One of my dad’s good friends was also there, and he followed me home (it wasn’t a short drive, and it was very late at night) just to make sure I got there. The next week, the principal gave me permission and a vehicle to take kids to the funeral. We sat in an overflow room, which was the right place for us.

I didn’t have any dreams, not until a few years later.

I don’t have any bows to tie this up with, or a thesis statement or whatever. There’s something here about showing up, and something about having permission to grieve however we need to grieve. Something about expecting anger. Expecting dreams (by the way, for me, talking about the dreams (literally, telling and retelling to anyone who will listen) deflates them a great deal). Knowing that this is a broken, hurting world, literally so broken and hurting that it’s creator’s sacrificial death was it’s only solution. Pain is to be expected, the painless times are the anomaly. I don’t mean that in a pessimistic way, but it’s realistic: maybe life is a reckless leap into relationship after relationship, knowing that loss and pain are inevitable.

My grandmother and my friend are each worth all of the hurt. I’d love them even more if I got a second chance, even knowing the blow of loss could be, somehow, harder. To everyone who has left: the rush of who you were (and are) is worth it, though we are crushed.

Maybe that’s my thesis statement, for today anyway.