Back of the Heart

Photo courtesy of Www.schlicksbier.com

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

Anne Lamott

Today I experienced a great sense of loss. More anticipatory than real but the feelings stopped me in my tracks, my breath caught in my chest and I shed a few tears. The sensation of loss was strikingly familiar and suddenly I was transported back into my grief over the loss of my father.

It’s been just over a year since we lost my dad. This once vital and dynamic man who was the life of the party, who gave the biggest, bestest hugs and had the ear everyone turned to, lost his fight with Parkinson’s, a disease that gives no quarter. It slowly robs individuals of much of what makes them who they are: their movement, their voice and sometimes even their thoughts. Watching it happen to someone is incredibly awful, eclipsed only by being the person it’s happening to.

I never felt like I grieved for my father. Not really. We knew he was close to passing the week or so before he died and I spent as much time with him then as I could at his home in the Bay Area, an almost 3 hour trip away. Our family was in the midst of a major move that had been scheduled months earlier when the hospice Nurse Practitioner told me my dad had anywhere from 2 hours to two days left to live. I was so torn. I really needed to be at our house to help my wife with coordinating the movers and I had just visited with my father the day before. I decided I would do the move and then head right to dad’s as soon as we were finished. The phone call came midday as we were loading the moving van. My father had passed at 10am.

Grief and loss are not simple things. There seems to be this popular idea that after a certain time one “should be over it by now”. But losing anyone, much less a parent, is a blow to our soul. It can shake the foundation of your world when that constant in your life suddenly ceases to be present. You see something and think, “I should tell dad this”, and then you remember, “Oh, I can’t”. That blow hits you again and again at unforeseen moments, tearing another wound in your heart each time. And the process is not linear. It goes up and down, stronger then more manageable, seemingly all better to incredible pain and then easing back towards doing well again.

Grief allows the expression of pain/sadness/anger at the loss of something precious to us. It gives us the chance to celebrate the importance of that person to us and the impact they had on our lives. And grief facilitates the release of these powerful emotions so we can feel a sense of closure. It’s a painful process to be sure but ultimately allows you to lovingly incorporate this person into a special place inside.

I lost my father August 1st, 2018. He was a husband, father, attorney, physicist, pilot, cyclist, lover of astronomy, champion of civil rights, hippie, supplier of “stone soup”, musician, and the best hugger I have ever met. I’m not done grieving for him yet. And that’s okay. Someone shared the wonderful concept of moving people from the front of the heart, where we keep all those we care for and interact with regularly, to the back of the heart, where they are safe, still held close and thought of with love and affection. “Hold on, dad. I’m just cleaning out the space in the back for you. I love you.”

Peace,

Terry

Breathe it all in. Love it all out.