The experience of loss is the paradox of life; life that becomes death. Loss is suffering in one word; to have someone or something we value taken away.
The experience of loss would be hard enough if it only happened once. But the fact is it happens several times, perhaps many times, and sometimes too many times to count, over one lifetime.
One thing I’ve often thought about is whether we have the potential to master loss.
It is only been recently that I’ve come to discover that loss, as a general and overall concept, cannot be mastered. We may master a certain kind of loss, accepting the grief as part and parcel of life. But that doesn’t mean we master every kind of loss. And I think God can teach us something in this; not least of which, this reality prevents us from becoming conceited (this aligns with what the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10). He was given something painful that had to be endured to prevent him from becoming conceited.
What makes being human so hard is that none of us at any time can predict just when loss will occur. It comes like a thief in the night. And only when it arrives do we comprehend that it was ever present as a potential reality from our very beginning.
Loss is impossibly hard. Anyone who has been touched by this suffering of having had someone beloved or something valuable taken away from us knows that grief is a pain that never truly leaves during the entire season we experience it. And in most cases, closure for grief is a myth. It never happens that way. It just so happens that we learn to live a new normal, which on the surface of it is a sad and stark reality.
I have found personally that the greatest gift of loss is learning to die to self. It is never an easy lesson to learn, but it is always worth learning.
I call this the Revenant Blessing. It is a broad and general lesson; once loss has swept our hope away on a torrent to oblivion, loss may not blindside us to that degree again.
We are given some gift of resilience that I liken better to a hopeful resignation. Nothing unimportant wins our covetous hearts over again.
But this doesn’t mean we won’t experience grief again. Losses will continue to occur. The bigger and more complicated our families and lives are, for instance, the more susceptible we are to loss.
We may well have been broken by loss, and we may have learned the lessons of Christ in dying to self; this doesn’t mean that we are fortified against every form of loss, for different losses bring different costs and requirements of us.
There is a wisdom in life that helps us as losses come. This is not about imagining that being human can be made easy. On the contrary, as we accept that being human is hard, we are given to a deeper, more gifted, experience of life. We are matured as we come to accept there are many things we cannot change.
What makes being human so hard is that this life is so unpredictable, and we cannot exercise supreme control over our thoughts, our emotions, and others’ thoughts and emotions. If only we could! But then if we could we wouldn’t live a life capable of love.
Perhaps we have suffered many losses already. Maybe there are some losses yet to be experienced. What stands us in good stead is our acceptance of the day; to take each day as it comes, gratefully, as the mystery each day is. And whether the day involves trial or tribulation or a mix of both matters less than the fact that the universe spins the same way every day.
What makes being human easier is when we finally arrive in that place where we don’t need to control the day, other people, our circumstances, the weather, or anything else.
This is an ‘arrival’ to strive for, and that gives enduring loss meaning, which fuels hope.
I know this one thing for sure, however. I’m so glad of the person I’ve become because — in spite — of the grief I’ve endured. I would not be the person I am today had it not been for the things I’ve suffered.
Empathy and compassion are the gifts borne of great suffering.