L – LOVE & LOSS

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When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.     

Rumi

 It is interesting to put love and loss together, as if the time of aging means love and loss coinciding. In fact, they often are associated together. Love and loss. Loss of self, partner, friends, health, body, energy, hair, time, life force, position and status, confidence and on it goes. Endless loss and lack and emptiness and no replacement. Nothing is the same as before. In fact, we delude ourselves thinking the befores are endlessly resumed. ‘Before’ remains just that and we move into something else repeatedly. If we search for the scenarios of befores we only find an abyss of darkness, loss and sorrow.

 Yet, loss can feel so huge that it hurts to breathe. Maybe we are so pained we become numb, without even knowing it. Love and loss can leads to us going to sleep in a glass coffin. We look present but are not. To those who get it, we are like the sleeping dead. To those who do not get it, well, they will not understand. The losses of this time of life are irreplaceable. We cannot make up for a partner or friend or job or so many minutes of our lives. We do not just get over it. All losses are impactful, but these are more so. Like we cannot inhale anymore. The emptiness is so profound. Life is forever an alteration and shaped by emptiness. A partner gone, old friends no more, children and parents dead, relationships ended through divorce, divergence of interests and lack of a common thread.

 A woman’s husband died only a year ago and the loss continues, each moment another feeling of lack and shadowed by sorrow. There is no reason, life feels empty, her muse is gone. Empty mind, no thought or feeling. The space of where he was sits off to the side or even is in the forefront, always. The flowers she got for his graveside are covered with her tears. She sorrows the love gone – even more due to their rocky relationship and previous separations occurring several times. The best and closest years were the last few ones, drawn closer through illness, and now he is not there. She is also not there as her memory for living is numbed. It is not dementia. It is emotional loss that deadens from within. She goes on but like a zombie and does not even see the severity of this state. The numbness has penetrated her inner being. Stymied her.

 Yet, even with this despair around loss, rebirth will occur, like the seasons and cycles of everything in nature.  From the dead arise the flowering of spring. We are nature. One part of life balances upon another. Eventually we smile, when we never thought we would; or eat when formerly food had no taste; or we move when our limbs were leaden; or we create when there was nothing. But, when subsumed by loss, there is nothing.

 Again, age means resilience to the huge swings and the emotional adjustments to the paradoxes that get wider and wider as we age. The lengths to which we traverse the emotional, physical and psychological stages of life are huge. The process requires fortitude. Maybe now we can face it because we have enough age. We have lived long enough as we awkwardly and stiltingly face the demands of the flux between love and loss.

Does loss of youth seem profound to you?

46 Comments on L – Love and Loss

  2. This is beautifully thought and written, Susan. Thanks for letting me know I am not alone in this place of loss and love and grieving. I have to step outside myself as an observer, see where I have quit something — physical or emotional — healthful for me, and correct myself to keep going.

    Sometimes I regret loss of youth, some things I would not want to repeat and am glad of where I am. To those who have just moved into your 50s, you seem like young whippersnappers to me. So, age is relative.

    • And a lovely response Samantha thank you. Inside, outside, sideways and all ways we keep on observing with a keen and curious eye. Regret is part of the equation and where we feel our loss of youth perhaps that much more ….
      Yes, age is relative, time is eternal .. thank you again.

  3. Loss of youth never bothered me until I turned 50 and then I felt, and still feel my mortality. Beautiful post!

    • Good to get a sense of your mortality Jeanette. It opens up other avenues of thinking. Makes things wider, broader, more challenging. Thank you for stopping by.

  4. Hi Susan, loved your post. So touchy and emotional. I think what you have said, i have gone through in embracing motherhood. After delivering my child i hit a low – baby blues or post partum depression was it. Whatever, but it took me some time to accept that my life has changed, my body, for forever without taking my permission. And so is my relationship with my husband.

    Visit us sometime, http://sinhasat302.blogspot.in/

    • Thank you for coming by Shweta. Post partum depression is huge knock. These knocks do come by with no permission given. Hopefully things are more on an even keel now?

  5. This is an excellent story that I SO understand. For me when the losses add up I feel as if I have been flattened by a steamroller. When I was younger, it was easier to get back up and fight, but now I feel flattened. Divorce, death, loss of jobs add up and take a toll on us.

    • Losses are hard to bear Gwynn and always are and will be. They take their toll for sure. Do they strengthen us in other ways? Make us more resilient? Thank you for your comment.

  6. Not coming by as often as I could and should because I always seem to land on a sad blog, my timing is poor. Beautifully-written and thought-provoking as always, and halfway through the challenge, yay for you, kudos 🙂 you do this so well

  7. yes hand in hand love and loss march thru our lives – how well you discussed this within the terms of our mature years- sometimes I can get terribly frightened at what has gone never to come round again but as you say rebirth – it pops up in the oddest of moments and we plunge back into living dragged sometimes against our will to be present to smile and be glad for all that is given to us.
    blessings

    • Dear Sandra;
      Rebirth is there as each day opens–whether we want to smile or not. It is there to get our attention, like love and loss…
      Thank you,
      Susan

  8. Some aspects I miss, others I don’t. I appreciate where I am in life. And the wisdom and resilience that comes with age helps us get through the moments easier. Not easy, just easier.

  10. Susan, I’ve been away, as my daughter just had a baby… that was love and lucky! I”m not in a mind set right now to think about loss.

  12. Hi,
    Loss is painful. It is also difficult to get through and there are times when it is hard to think on the rebirth or regeneration of things. Yet, if we realize we are on a journey where change is inevitable, then I believe we overcome as we look forward to the future.

    Shalom,
    Patricia

  13. I am simply going to have to bookmark/return to these A-Z reflections in the future… They are so profound, and I need to spend more time with them then I can – this is a too-busy month! (And the A-Z challenge is a significant part of that – a mixed blessing!) Thank you for your offerings; I absorb what I can!…!

  15. Well said, Susan. As you said, loss makes it hard to breath. I experienced this a few years ago for the fist time with the loss of my aunt, who more or less raised me. Loss of youth? It’s no fun, but okay since it’s gradual…giving us a little time to embrace a new era. Thanks for the great post.

  16. I lost 2 people I loved very much 15 yrs ago. First my mother , then three days later was told my husband had terminal brain cancer and he too passed away 2 months later, well I went through the grieving process and it took time to accept, but I eventually did and started to “Live” again. However one of my sons’ and daughter have cut me from their lives for reasons I don’t know plus I don’t see my grandchildren, this loss is just as awful as they are very much alive and I long to see or perhaps have a phone call from them. Two different sort of loses but both painful.
    Yvonne.

    • Dear Yvonne;
      I am sorry this appeared farther down the list so I resent it to you.
      So many losses to be acknowledged and sorrowed as part of life…
      Thank you.
      Susan

  17. The older I get the more I think the glory of youth is profound. I love how you write about the best and closest years being the last ones, and how profoundly painful that can be.

    • Dear Ida;
      Maybe the later years are more because we can and do feel more love and loss as we live the years of our being…
      Thank you,
      Susan

  18. Lovely to re-connect Marian! And so interesting what you say about your own memoirs and the collaboration. Yes please re: staying in touch.
    Susan Schwartz in Phoenix wrote today’s post on Loss and Love. It gives much cause for pause. Not that you said that …
    Susan I am sure will respond also …

  19. Thank you for re-connecting and for your kind comments on my blog yesterday. I congratulate you on taking the April challenge, blogging from A-Z. Two good things about that: 1. Such an organizing element gives you a “spine” to build on throughout the month. 2. I love that you are collaborating with another writer in doing this. When I first began writing memoir, a colleague and I paired up to write short essay about similar topics.

    About today’s post: The idea of rebirth is so appealing, especially during this season of the year. Your profound statement in the conclusion gives me cause for pause:” Again, age means resilience to the huge swings and the emotional adjustments to the paradoxes that get wider and wider as we age.” That one I’ll have to think more about. Thank you, Susan! We’ll have to stay in touch.

    • Lovely to re-connect Marian! And so interesting what you say about your own memoirs and the collaboration. Yes please re: staying in touch.
      Susan Schwartz in Phoenix wrote today’s post on Loss and Love. It gives much cause for pause. Not that you said that …
      Susan I am sure will respond also …

  20. More so than ever since I lost one child and my son is just 6 and I turn 50 this year. I am afraid I will not be here when he grows up. Its keeping me from sleeping.

  21. A really lovely piece, very thought provoking, and the writings of Rumi, they keeping popping up in my world at the moment, curious!

  22. Your words say it all … and connection to ourselves and others who experience Loss reminds us of its painful unifying beauty.
    Thank you for your comment.

  23. There is always rebirth as you say, and even beauty in the experience if we let ourselves be touched by it. Maybe a celebration of humanity, of feeling connected, of being alive, of respect and remembrance….? I don’t have the words but when the loss feels unbearable I try to connect with its beauty and the shared experience of others. To connect with others and further the dialogue of grief and loss…such a common, uniting experience but so often taboo to talk about.

    • Your words say it all … and connection to ourselves and others who experience Loss reminds us of its painful unifying beauty.
      Thank you for your comment.

  24. That was outstanding and actually made me cry, loss touches me very hard, my dad’s been dead over 30 years and reading your post made it feel like yesterday, I mean that as a compliment.
    As to youth, I laughed at getting older, till my hair started falling out…wasn’t very funny then! I went completely bald in a strip from ear to ear at the back of my head, luckily my hair was long enough that it wasn’t noticeable, but I knew. A few lifestyle changes later and I’ve been one of the lucky ones, it’s grown back, though curly where it was previously straight, not a look I’d recommend. 🙂

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