On Grief. And Sparks.

 

Hello again. I've been away for a while. I know this might not be the best topic to herald my return, but here we are. 

I've been thinking about grief lately. I thought I knew what grief was, but the death of my father a little over 8 years ago drastically changed my perspective on grief. I was lucky. I had the best of friends who moved heaven and earth to be with me and get me through the time. Within a year, I repaid the favor when one and then the other lost their fathers. One. Two. Three. We each had different relationships with our fathers. Their stories aren't mine to tell, but my grief was strongly centered in feeling like my safety net had been ripped away. It left me breathless. Panic stricken. Gasping for air. I'm still "getting over" it. I don't know if I ever will. 

That change in perspective started my thinking about the heart holes people leave when they're gone. My heart's hole was different from my mother's heart's hole upon my father's death. My father's role in my life was - obviously - different than hers. 

It's little things that seem to creep up on us all that make those holes evident. For me, it was searching out sardines in tomato sauce. For some reason, he thought that was a delicacy. He was delighted when one of us found some. He'd break out some saltine crackers and act like we'd given him caviar. About three months after his death, I found myself in a grocery story thrilled that I'd found some, only to realize he wasn't here to celebrate with me. And I burst into tears in the middle of a grocery store aisle feeling like a nut job. Little things. Big heart holes. 

Not long after, I lost a college professor who was very instrumental in my finding my path in learning. He'd been young in his career - less than a decade older than his students - when I first met him. My weirdo soul found a friend in him. We'd sit at the community table outside the suite of offices he occupied, along with 5 other professors, and talk about obscure Czech punk and Dadaism. Talk about rabbit holes, we'd find them for hours on end. We'd follow each other into the abyss of obscurity and in some ways he gave me permission to be my weirdo self. 

We'd kept in touch after my graduation, but as I married and had a child, that contact lessened. But for some reason it was important that he was still out there, leading other weirdos on a learning journey, making it okay to love to learn. Heart, meet hole. Another spark gone. 

This summer, two of my best friends from high school lost their mothers within weeks of each other. These were the moms who had herded us through first periods, science projects, and school dances (all equally traumatic as a young teen woman). We'd visit each of their homes and they'd bring us snacks. They had actively raised the women who got me through high school. And they were now gone. Spark, spark.  

This was on the heels of my best friend from college losing her mother - a woman I claimed as a second mother (and she claimed me right back). She taught me to make stollen and sheltered me when I had hard life choices to make. She'd listened when I said I'd met the man I wanted to marry. She held me when I cried over the children I lost. She celebrated my son's birth.  She loved me. One. Two. Three. Spark.

Having lost my dad, I knew there was nothing you could say to fill those heart holes. There are no words of comfort that magically make it better. There is nothing you can do. At best, I could express love and stand with them as they buried pieces of their hearts. 

The weird part of losing my second mother is that I was trying to be there for my (all but blood) sister, when I was grieving myself. I just didn't realize it until the home they'd both welcomed me into was sold. Well, hello heart hole. Didn't know you'd be so big. But there you are.

Now you're kinda caught up. There's a point here, I promise. I'm getting to it. Enter Friday night. 

I'd finished a long, tough day at work only to find that two high school classmates had died on the same day. This was on the heels of the loss of another classmate, killed in a freak accident not too long ago. One. Two. Three. Again, I'd not talked to these folks for quite some time. We grew up together - two of them on the same street at different times in my childhood - but our lives went in different directions. 

Reading over tributes, I could see that I was not the only one affected by this loss. We all were. These were our people. They had made us smile. They had been leaders in their own ways. We had journeyed the pain of adolescence together and had successfully come out the other side. We'd had lives and families, and loved, and were loved, but had done so in different places. We still had that history, that commonality. 

I've been reflecting on lives lived as I work through this newest heart hole. How can I still mourn someone I've not seen for decades? Why is my heart heavy when I don't really know their partners, their children, where they lived, the communities they'd grown? 

It came to me today. 

Whether the loss is big or small, we're losing sparks of ourself with every person we bury. These are the people who knew us when we were innocent, who protected us and guided us and lived through angst with us. They knew us at our best and our worst, and now they're gone. Spark after spark, they're flitting away into the afterlife, leaving the rest of us behind. We're forced to face our mortality, sure. But we're also losing pieces of ourselves, knowing that there might be a day when we're the last to remember who we were, the dreams we had, and the experiences we shared. 

So as I'm looking through photos, looking at the firsts they celebrated with their families, knowing they probably didn't know to mark the lasts, I felt like I needed to tell their stories. I needed to share that they mattered. I needed to share that they made an impact, made this world better for a young woman from the heart of WV. Steve, Jack, Ky. Almuth, Judy, June. Bill, John, Mike, Jay. You mattered to me. 

Spark on.