Accepting Unacceptable Change

Right now, we are in the midst of so much change. The world, collectively, is grieving the loss of the life we knew and may never have back. It’s an eerie backdrop to grieving someone you love. Change is the thing that connects these two types of loss. A person who was here is suddenly gone. Into the air like steam from a kettle, they just disappear. That is an enormous change. Their departure creates all sorts of change in your life, your home, your work, your routine.

How we cling to what was. Of course, you want your person back. The old life you knew. The certainty around it. Except there is no real certainty. Change is constant. It was happening in the days leading up to your loss, and it continues to happen in every possible way. It is our resistance to change that makes grieving even harder.

I won’t suggest that you should welcome this different life. Only one who never truly loved could. But death and loss is our reality as humans. The time will come for us all. We know this and, yet, we are outraged by it. Not him. Not her. Not my person. Maybe even, “not me.” And yet, it doesn’t matter what we wish. The time comes, and we have no control over it.

Mourn your loss. Feel your grief. Wail at the top of your lungs to help release it if only for a moment’s rest after. But be true to yourself and to your lost loved one. Acknowledge this reality without fighting against it. There is nothing you could do then, nothing you can do in the future, nothing that can alter this unacceptable change. You take some of the power out of the sting by giving up the fight against it. You may even be able to set foot in your own world again, to experience what’s still available in your life rather than slipping through the rest of it with eyes closed, lost in the other world.

Think how you looked when you were a baby compared to how you look now. Imagine how you may look in another twenty years. We are all in constant change. Right now, without even noticing it, a hair is shifting, a freckle forming, a piece of skin beginning to fold. We can’t see it, but it’s moving anyway, following its own path. See if you can notice the world around you, the one you’re in right now, as a continually-evolving experience, even when all seems quiet. Perhaps when the next storm blows through, you won’t be knocked down quite so fully. And maybe, there is a change that happens ahead, or even after this life experience, that is more grand than we can imagine.

May you find peace through all of your changes. May you live safely without undue fear.

Losing Your Life Partner

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