Yesterday, I found out that an old friend and neighbor had passed away. The news came a couple of days after the anniversary of my late husband’s death. I’ve been feeling the tap of grief ever since, revisiting it, remembering people gone, my different lives gone. No matter how many deaths you’ve been around, how much you’ve supported others through their grief, when it touches you again, even lightly, it is always a shock.

We all know that death is going to happen to everyone, and yet, it is such a surprise. Always. Where did they go? What is the point of pursuing a life just to disappear? We don’t even have the courtesy of knowing the end date. It defies all that we practice in everyday life. Keeping calendars, making future plans, setting and working toward goals, planning, loving people. When one of the people we love gets snatched away, they were in the midst of doing these things. Maybe we follow behind their trail and try to organize what they’ve left behind, but you cannot just sweep up and maintain an entire life. They are gone, and that makes them somehow more heavily with us. It’s like being full with a hole in your stomach.

When I was young, I mostly dismissed death. It was something I’d worry about later. Now the deaths around me have become significant and it’s time to pay attention. Each loss reminds me that my time will come too. I use the human skills I’ve developed to deal with this impossible reality. I learn about end of life options, try to get legal documents in order, plan for whomever and whatever I may leave behind. But I cannot plan how it will happen or when. Like everyone else, I worry most not about death but about nearing it. I hope to avoid suffering. And I worry about whom my death might hurt because we know now what this feels like and don’t want to be the cause of it for anyone who loves us.

I don’t know any magic to make this all better. But the experience I’ve had so far around grief has taught me something else that’s shocking. I survived it. I really didn’t think it was possible but here I am planning, and working on goals, and loving people again. We are incredibly resilient, and that is a surprise that’s good. I hope that you, too, may come back from the deep dark sadness that visits us again and again and find that you are still here, still living, still loving.

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New Love After Loss

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