Loss doesn’t have to mean death…. and oftentimes, it doesn’t.
When we hear of loss, the first thing that usually pops into people's minds is someone passing. I know that when I hear the word loss in the wake of my mothers untimely passing, all I can think of is her beautiful face. But so many times, the losses that affect us so deeply have nothing to do with death. It can look like a lot of other things; divorce, empty nest syndrome, a job, or maybe parting ways with a good friend. I think it’s really important to know that loss can look like many things and that in all situations it can be equally devastating and extremely tough to get through. It isn’t our job to decide on what people view as loss either.
Loss for me right now means my mom. I can’t see anything else right now. I can’t feel as much of any other pain, because that loss is so big in my life and so deeply affects me everyday. I simply don’t have much room for anything else. My heart just can’t feel the other “hurts” as much. For example, I am a new “empty nester”. This is a time in my life that I’ve dreaded for so long, since my kids were born to be exact. I have helped both of my kids move out to school and to their own independent lives around the same time as my mom getting sick and passing away. I can’t lie, the emptiness I felt at the start of that process was just all-consuming.
I went from being a soccer/ baseball/ basketball mom; my son on two teams almost every season with games every other day, to no more games in the blink of an eye. But that harsh blow to my reality was cushioned by the fact that my daughter was a competitive dancer from age 7-18 and when I tell you there was still no down time, there was STILL no down time. I spent my days running her to and from rehearsal’s and classes and every single weekend was filled with conventions and competitions or some other type of training. I worked 60 or more hours a week at two jobs for four years and still managed to get that kid everywhere she needed to be. Those activities were a huge part of my life for years and years. By the age of forty, I couldn’t even remember what it was like to have “me time”. Hell I couldn’t even remember most days who I was as a person. And to be honest, I was the kind of mom that liked it that way. I always relished being so busy I never had time to be alone with my thoughts (*story on total adrenal burn out set for another day).
Flash to this past Fall when my daughter moved into her conservatory program an hour away, the same week my mom who had been dx with stage 4 cancer only 3 months prior, took her final breath. I will spend some time diving into that horror show another day, because I know I need to. But in regards to this post, I went from literally flying my daughter back and forth to Florida all year, hosting her graduation party in June, to the next week finding out my mom was sick and our entire summer being consumed with scared and desperate days in the hospital, trying to get her referred to places, quite literally fighting for her life… to her being gone. Just...poof- gone. To my kids being gone. I was consumed with loss. It was all around me. Who knew the absence of people could be so tangible? Like a thick cloud of air that just lingered in the rooms of my home, sucking the life out of almost everything.
I would walk into my living room and have a sudden flashback of my kids when they were little, running around. I could literally hear their wild laughter, and it would just take the wind out of me. That punch to the gut would be followed by the memory of my mom’s face as she smiled at me. The real loss was their presence, the perceived loss was my past. And so, those memories continued to haunt me, and they still do sometimes, as I navigate through all the things I know will be no more. Oof. It hurts so freakin’ bad. But I think it’s supposed to. The truth is that I ache for those moments because they were some of the best moments of my life. And this grieving period, it will be a doozy for me. It was never, not going to be that way. So, I try my best to lean into it and learn from the pain. Whatever the hell that means. And to be honest, it shows up different every single day.
I imagine that’s how some people feel when a relationship or marriage dissolves. All the memories of better times and should’ve been’s sort of consume your head as you grieve the loss of what was supposed to be your forever person. I am sure with kids involved, it’s even worse. Guilt, shame, heartache… those are all words I heard my mom use to describe how she felt when her marriage was annulled when we were just babies. The loss of her marriage was even more of a stigma back then in 1980, and to make it worse, the loser took off with her best friend. I often think, how did she do it? Three young kids under the age of 4, no home, no plan and hardly any money. How did she do it?
But I think this is the part I find some salvation in. She did it because she just kept going. Mom kept going. In the face of one of the most life defining moments, in the scope of immense loss- she never quit. She must have been so scared and must have felt so alone. But she kept going. She focused on what was in front of her and never stopped trying to give her three kids the life she knew they deserved to have. She moved into a tiny apartment, one where the bathroom was bigger than our shared bedroom, and she just-kept-going. She loved us, she nurtured us, she provided for us. She was a vision of strength and grit I never realized until I was older, how those traits had become so engrained in us as a family and as humans.
It’s funny, as I write this it begins to shape my understanding in a way I never knew it would. This is why I started this blog. To work through the shit that I didn’t even know I had to. To let the story take me where it needed to. To show me a reason, a way, and to bring me back to the root of things. My mother had what I can only imagine was one of the biggest losses of her life at the age of 23… three tiny kids in tow, yet, that loss turned into the most beautiful life she could have ever imagined. When she spoke of what she went through, she danced over the hard parts- so matter of fact. This was what was dealt- this is what I did. And now look at my beautiful life.
She couldn’t have known it fully then, but losing her husband meant losing a cheating, alcoholic, deadbeat dad- that most likely would have traumatized us in more ways than one, had they stayed together. She met my dad, my REAL dad, a few years later when I was 6 and he became the dad and husband we had deserved from the start. That “loss”, turned into the biggest gain of her young life (and our young lives too). Wait… why am I just realizing that in the scope of major loss, what that can bring? Like some type of reciprocal force that takes and then gives and balances things out. Listen… I’m not saying I think losing my mom tragically the way we did is a gift. I wouldn’t fucking dare do that. It was a tragedy for myself and dad and my siblings and I have literal PTSD. But maybe, in honor of my mom, and in honor of her strength, I can hope that one day I will find a way to reframe this loss and make it something so much more meaningful? Even if I couldn’t possibly see that now.
Right now, I am in the thick of it. I’m mad, hurt, angry, and questioning everything I ever thought I believed. This tornado in my head is now a normal Tuesday for me (yay so fun). But maybe, if I’m able to let go of some of the emptiness and pain, I can eventually step back and see the bigger picture one day. And listen- today isn’t the day, ok? But maybe in five years from now, that loss of wild laughter in my home every night will turn into something bigger and better as I watch the growth of my kids into adulthood. Maybe I will see and feel something bigger and more meaningful than just a lump of pain in the back of my throat. Just like the loss of your marriage, will maybe one day bring you your forever person you never knew even existed. Maybe you couldn’t appreciate that forever person without the pain of the first go-round. And the pain of your kids leaving the nest, maybe that pain will be a distant memory the first time you see them kicking ass in their career, or when you hold your first grandchild and feel a new love you never knew could be. Maybe the loss of that friend who burnt you- who used and abused you and made you feel so fucking small, actually gave you a deeper and more intuitive way to know who comes into your life for the right reasons and that intuition, born of loss, actually protects you from those who would only do the same? Maybe loss teaches us things, whether we want it to or not.
Because let’s be honest. Life is loss. Loss is an integral part of life that we all need to find a way to embrace. It’s losing people, places and things… hell it’s even losing ourselves sometimes. If we can’t find a way to perceive our loss in a bigger and more meaningful way- we set ourselves up for a pretty miserable life. And quite honestly, my mom would be so pissed at me being this sad all the time. She’d tell me to knock that shit off and focus on what’s right in front of me. And while I’m not ready for that full perspective quite yet…and maybe you’re not ready either (and that’s ok), I really hope one day we will be. I guess in the scope of loss, we have to find a way to hold onto the lessons so it makes us even bigger, instead of sucking us dry. Losing could then become gaining, when we are ready to accept the lesson it brings us. Perception shift = hope.
Here’s to redefining our losses and refusing to let them make us less-than. This is how we go through it guys.
Love, Nikki
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