Have you ever noticed how films often use just one scene to show a character accepting a great loss? The character has an enormous cry in which all their grief pours down their face in tears and snot. Outside, thunder rumbles and rain beats down. In agony, the character falls to the ground after, perhaps, breaking something valuable, a metaphor for their former selves. Cut to the next scene: The character is shown leaving a house or entering some other building, with purpose, with confidence. They are a vessel emptied and refilled. The action of the film can now lead to its conclusion.
I have not found loss to be like that at all.
I cry in little bits. I pour off a tiny portion of whatever was in the vessel—my former me, former relationships, former goals—and for a while, maybe a long while, I just have less in the vessel. Less of a self. I’m four ounces of wine in a six-ounce glass; a pint of milk in a quart bottle.
In time, something I read or something someone says or something I experience adds a dram to the bottle. A bit of new wine, maybe better quality. A spoonful of fresher milk. I’m, say, sixty percent the old me and ten percent the new me. Still kinda empty.
After a while, I do a little more crying. I empty, am aware of the lack of me, and then fill a wee bit more. Now I’m fifty parts old and twenty parts new.
And so, over time that stretches as far as hope is from despair, I reckon with losses.
I should probably spend more time on this loss and transition process than I do. I could meditate, read, walk in the woods, write in a journal. But I’ll tell you, I am really resisting this emptying and filling business. The truth is, as much as I complained about the details of my life before chronic illness, I liked a lot of the basic contours. I. want. to. keep. them.
I want to keep my career, and specifically my most recent job. I want to keep my colleagues and my mentors and my students. I want to keep my involvement in my children’s lives, my visits to family, my time with friends. I want to travel more than I did, not less.
I’m very reluctant to let go of the old and extremely uncertain about the new stuff I’m putting in the bottle, or whether there even is anything to put in the bottle.
But I think it must be done. And maybe moving into the new, with courage, means crying in bigger bits, letting go of larger amounts at a time, sitting still for longer, and filling with greater amounts of quiet and unanticipated new.
After quite a few years of illness, I think I know how to do that. And I think I shall.
