Loss, Death, Hearts, Tao...

I am wondering during loss.

I am wandering during loss.

When you lose someone, are you mourning the lost person or are you mourning your own loss? Do you cry that the person is gone, the relationship is over, that they no longer experience life as they once did? Or do you cry over your own selfish needs no longer met?
The biggest heartbreak robs your soul of its life-spark and you are left alone. There is anger and fear and remorse and bitterness and regret and determination and denial and depression. They go about their daily life as though you never even existed for them, while your sink down toward the ultimate nadir of darkness. It seems you are mourning what you have lost, not that they are gone. It could be anyone who has left. The feelings are the same.

A bittersweet childhood experience births antipathy and ambivalence. When that parent that claimed they loved you while beating you dies, why are you sad? When that parent that uses one breath to love and the next to diminish, how do you ever know what love is supposed to feel like, except confusing and bad? If you don't feel sad, do you feel guilty for not being sad--like you are supposed to be? When you finally break down in heart-clenching sobs, is it over the traumatic childhood and not having loving parents like everyone else does? Are you mourning the fact that you never had a kind family and never will? That you face the world bereft not only of parents, but of any true, close family to share, support, and love? Are you grieving for their pain or your own box of aloneness in this world? Are you wishing you had been better? Would being better have even made a difference in a dysfunctional relationship? You know that the right answer is a NO that cracks like a whip. In the end, the pity you feel is for them, who lies there: in their pain, or their disability, or for the life they missed. In the end, the sadness and grief you feel is for yourself and what you missed and will always miss in your own life.

When you wonder during loss do you clam up and hold it and remain strong, refusing the tears that fight against the dam of willpower?

When you wander during loss do you finally let it go and crash into the depths of your sobs, run into your room and fling yourself into your pillows that you can wail freely? Do you call your friends and tell them you need a shoulder to cry on without even being able to finish that sentence before bursting into a new set of cries and tears?

As you wonder and wander through the grief and pain and self-pity and anger and sadness, do you visit the hospital and face the demon within yourself? Do you pull the strength up from within -- it's always resided within -- to do what needs to be done to take care of your very own heart, your own precious soul, your being?

Own the pain and suffering, but question the story behind it, while taking extra good care of yourself in those days of wandering.