Dealing With Loss
Beams of sunlight pierced through the bristling green leaves as my uncle and I traversed down a forest path near my house. We talked for hours as we walked down the different trails sharing jokes, discussing our problems, and describing our passions. We continued to go on these walks for multiple days which allowed me to grow close to my uncle and meet a man who held a deep concern for both his family and his friends. This concern came from a place of great fear because he was recently diagnosed with cancer and didn’t want to leave the ones he loved behind. This fear gave him an otherworldly drive to do everything in his power to stay healthy. He soon went back to Alabama and made large progress toward beating his diagnoses. Then, just a couple weeks ago, his treatment suddenly stopped working and he hit the ground hard. Two weeks later, he took his last breath as his biggest fear became a reality: he left his family and friends behind.
My uncle's story is sorrowful yet, not a unique one. It’s an experience that everyone goes through. That is why although my family and I grieve today, thousands of others will do the same tomorrow. We lose people everyday and I’m certainly not trying to make light of this situation because it is a harrowing one, instead I’m exposing the dismal truth of our world; everyone has or will go through great losses in their lives. So, how can one possibly move forward when they lose someone or something that they’ve invested so much of themselves into?
Let me preface this by saying I’m no expert, I’m 17 years old. I get most of my knowledge from reading, listening, and talking to people with far greater wisdom than I. Grief launches a multitude of emotions onto us that we don’t typically feel and almost no one can handle that overload by themselves. So, seek help if you are struggling. It won’t make you weak, it will make you stronger.
Grief comes in a variety of forms because there are numerous ways that people deal with it. Grief isn’t always about the death of a person either, it can be about the death of anything meaningful to us. When boiled down, grief is our reaction to a hole in our lives that is no longer being filled by someone or something.
With that in mind, I want you to picture your life as a beautiful embroidered quilt pieced together by many different segments representing various experiences. One day, a tragedy struck, which was the death of your parents and the most beautiful segment of your quilt was torn out, leaving a gaping hole in the middle. The hole left the quilt very vulnerable to tearing. Yet your parent’s segment was so beautiful, unique, and significant that you knew nothing could possibly replace it. So, you decided to leave the hole untouched. But as time passed, your quilt began to tear and chasms began to seep into other parts of your quilt. You grew colder and colder as your quilt dwindled. Eventually your once beautiful quilt was nothing but a disaster of rips and tears, providing no warmth in the cold of the night.
This is why we need to cover the holes left by loss, by working through our grief. If the dream that gave you purpose was crushed, your friend that gave you emotional clarity passed away, or your uncle that gave you comfort died, you have to find these things elsewhere. Although it will never be the same as before, we need to patch together the holes that have been torn out of us. Otherwise, we will share the same fate as the unpatched quilt. Patching together the holes is no easy task, so be patient, ask for help, and always look towards hope.
Written by Caleb Goodwin
