The Journey of Love and Loss
to live in this world
you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go
-Mary Oliver
To lose someone you deeply love is not unlike the shattering experience of being in a terrible car accident. This sudden loss can come in the form of a true love, a broken friendship or an estranged family member. Each one of us will be visited by this loss at some point through the natural process of death.
Whatever form this painful loss takes, it is something that will visit every one of us in our lives at some moment. If it happens suddenly and unexpectedly you may find yourself lying on the pavement in a daze next to the curb wondering what has just happened.
the caterpillar feels the pain when it must dissolve into nothingness pure liquid and then one day suddenly a butterfly comes
As you struggle in confusion to regain your sense of equilibrium your legs are feeble beneath you as you try to find your way to simply stand again. The following days and weeks will take on a blur of fog as you strive to go through the activities and routines that will support your recovery. Perhaps you write, you walk, you spend time in nature. Music can be helpful or it may reconnect you to your lost one in such a way that it takes you deeper into the well of grief.
Walking becomes a form of physical therapy, however the process is painfully slow to recover the world in which you thought you once knew. You force yourself to eat as the body must nourish and go on but all food has somehow lost its flavor and zest. You continue going through the motions day after day although your world has now become numb amidst the clouds of grey and the light and presence of the one you so dearly loved is no longer there.
In the context of this loving relationship that connected you to another the brain and the body had begun to rewire itself in a new direction and heal and slowly acclimate itself to a healthy and loving environment.
Those who undertake the full journey into their grief come back carrying medicine for the world. -Francis Weller
There is no timeline or process for the journey of grief. It will take its own time and path which it alone dictates. The level to which you grieve and the time required will be as deeply rooted as the level to which you fully allowed yourself to love.
Rescuing and tenderly holding a broken heart is much like the rescue and care of a baby bird that has fallen from its nest and has been abandoned by its parents. You can do everything you know to support its healing ever so gently, but in the end not every bird, and sadly not every heart, survives the fall.
When you find yourself in this place of utter darkness, this liquid soup of grief from losing someone you so deeply love, you are in a moment of choice. You can choose the old familiar path, you can reach for those comforting walls of self-protection and rebuild them yet again around your heart, in the attempt that no one will ever get through to hurt you one more time.
Or you can let go, take the free fall, remain soft and fully broken, and have the courage and determination to remain in the darkness amidst the liquid nothingness, realizing that all that is now left is the healing flow of pure love that comes out of the deepest reserves a broken heart.
Choosing that love is the healing medicine for your tender heart, your soul and for the world.
As Mark Nepo once wrote, "we are each just fragments of the one big heart weaving itself back together again."Just as the caterpillar found what it thought to be a safe home within the warm cocoon, it only proved to be the holding space for its further dissolution and liquification. All sense of its reality became nothingness.
It is only from this place, this place of dark liquid nothingness, that perhaps with great patience and tender care, that one day the butterfly will come.
“Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises.”
-RumiView from the Road
The Short Beautiful Life of the Morphe Butterfly
In Ciudad Colón where I live, I am fortunate to be on a mountain that leads to the edge of a lush rainforest. It beckons with a daily invitation for hikes into nature before the rain arrives in the afternoons.
On one perfect Saturday we took a beautiful morning hike with the sun still low and a gentle breeze making its way through the trees. Along our way we were surprised when a butterfly of the most beautiful blue came flying right upon me and began circling my face. It was the elusive Morphe butterfly.
Blue is the rarest color in nature and the Morphe butterfly is equally rare, but makes its home in Costa Rica. The color blue is often thought to symbolize healing, whether it be personal healing or that of someone close to you.
The natives of the rainforest considered the “blue butterfly” as the wish-granter. It is difficult to catch a photo as they are so full of life energy and never stop long enough to capture. Following this magical encounter on our hike I was not only hypnotized by this spectacular shade of blue, but I became equally fascinated with the life of the Morphe butterfly.
I learned that the life of the Morphe butterfly is only 115 days. Perhaps one of the most beautiful creations I have ever encountered in nature and its life is but the blink of an eye. And yet, it is never still, never not fluttering around from flower to flower, fulling living out each one of its 115 days.
It was a beautiful metaphor for each of our lives. In the grand scheme of things, we are each here but for a brief moment in time.
I once asked myself the question, “What would I do if I had only one year to live?”
The answer to that question led me to living for a year in Kyoto, Japan and inspired many of the writings on this site.
I am still here, but I continually revisit that question.
What becomes important?
Who becomes important?
Who do I love?
Who do I give my energy and love?
As Carl Jung wrote “Life is a short pause between two great mysteries.” Not one of us knows how long we get or how many days we have. Perhaps 115 days. If so, what would you do and with who would you do it if you had only 115 days.
As the poet Rumi even more wisely put it, “With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love.”
Field Notes
If You Knew
What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.
A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
-Ellen Bass
From the Archives
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Each time the tide
of love visits my shore
all the boats
I have worked so hard
to carefully build
are left completely
destroyed
-Kirk Lee Subscribe. Donate. Share the Journey.
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