Is it wrong to just want one more day? My Afterloss took me on a quest into the dynamic of continuity and closure. I needed to find a way to come to peace with what was left unsaid, undone, unfinished. And I needed to find a new way of relating to what continued.
I do not separate life, death and loss. All are elements of existence: different elements, same existence. Death has shaped me all my life. Loss intertwines my life. Death is not an event; it is an unfolding experience in my canopy of life. Life, death and loss are inseparable on the path I have walked.
It is not a morbid exploration. It is not a cold, objective endeavor of a philosophical nature. I have simply chosen to explore experience, whatever that experience is. This, for me, just happens to be what is.
My relationship with closure has been a painful one. I always wanted one more day. I thought we had one more day. When everything had been said, there was always one more thing I wanted to say. There was never enough words, never enough kisses, never enough time.
And when Matt died, I knew our day had ended. And I knew my longing for one more day would never end.
I have found a different experience with my yearning for closure than I thought it would be. Closure is not completion. Nothing ends in my Afterloss. Closure is peace with what is left unsaid, undone, unfinished.
Closure is accepting my yearning for more will always be there. I interpret my yearning as a testament to continuity.
When I would have these massive emotional seizures that overwhelmed me, I would lean in and let go into them just to see where they would take me. They left me lying on the floor, literally, and metaphorically on the finite edge of the infinite in the in between.
These sporadic and spontaneous outbursts of agony left me unsaid, undone, unfinished. I knew another wave would come. I was not so sure when or where it would go, but I promised myself I would go, too. I had nothing left to resist. I felt my life was gone and there was nothing to cling to anyway. All I had left was my willingness to go into the depths of my sorrow, into realms of loss, life and death. Realms I didn’t even know existed.
It was there I experienced closure and continuity. I walked through those days after they had all died thinking there was nothing left, but emptying everything into that moment of pure anguish I found part of what was left was the unsaid, undone and unfinished.
To this day, I want to hold them, hear their voices, melt into the stories of their day, laugh at a good joke, sit next to their pain and celebrate their joys. To this day I just want another day.
When the emotional seizures subsided and I was left in the residue of the unsaid, undone, unfinished, I would crawl back up into a chair and let it all settle. Ultimately, I would ask what do I do with this now? What is there to say, to do and to finish?
Even though grief is a common path, everyone walks their own. There is no right or wrong in the living with loss. What is authentic for one is not necessarily what is true for another. There is a common place where all sorrow meets, but the journey there navigates the sojourner more than the sojourner navigates the journey.
In my wanderings through the Afterloss, continuity of what to say, do or finish manifested in the questions of how do I go on and what do I do now? My answer was to go into and do whatever shows up.
How is more important to me than what. How do I go into such pain? What works for me is to go with an open heart, to lean into life without resistance, to feel everything I can with all that I am. I have chosen to not close to the pain, the emptiness, the anger, the joy, the fullness and especially the unsaid, undone and unfinished.
The saying is “life goes on.” I didn’t care what they said. I wanted to find out for myself. Life has gone on, but I walk with the wounds life has left me. Life goes on, but it takes all I have to keep an open heart when the undercurrent of loss pulsates in time with my love. Life goes on, but not as before. I have experienced life going on, but I have no illusion that I will ever, ever not long for one more day with the ones I will always love.
