Loss and Bereavement

Loss and bereavement can remind you sharply of what can happen when in life you do not show your love and appreciation, or ask for forgiveness, and so make you far more sensitive to your loved ones.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said: ‘What I try to teach people is to live in such a way that you say those things while the other person can still hear it.” And Raymond Moody, after his life’s work in near-death research, wrote: “I have begun to realize how near to death we all are in our daily lives. More than ever now I am very careful to let each person I love know how I feel.”   -Rigpa

Suffering

When someone is suffering and you find yourself at a loss to know how to help, put yourself unflinchingly in his or her place. Imagine as vividly as possible what you would be going through if you were suffering the same pain. Ask yourself: “How would I feel? How would I want my friends to treat me? What would I most want from them?”

When you exchange yourself for others in this way, you are directly transferring your cherishing from its usual object, yourself, to other beings. So exchanging yourself for others is a very powerful way of loosening the hold on you of the self-cherishing and the self-grasping of ego, and so of releasing the heart of your compassion.   ---Rigpa

Pain

Don’t we know, only too well, that protection from pain doesn’t work, and that when we try to defend ourselves from suffering, we only suffer more and don’t learn what we can from the experience? As Rilke wrote, the protected heart that is “never exposed to loss, innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness; only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free, through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.”

Life

Life

It’s Saturday night after a week of listening to stories in therapy and reflecting on who I am as a therapist. We carry our experience with us and it contributes to how we interact with each other. Often the stories I hear are painful ones. Many times people find it hard to let go. I find it hard to let go. It’s been nearly five years since I watched my brother die at 49. Held his hand as he took his last breath. Then four months later my mom died. Died, I guess, of a broken heart. She shut down and went away.

It doesn't mean I know what you feel. It doesn't mean that I understand. Instead it informs my ‘Toddness,’ my sense of ‘I am’. Their deaths as painful as they were became a part of the tapestry which is me. And in that me I can be happy. Happy that they are a part of the fabric of my life. So when I listen I do not know what you feel, but all of me which is colorfully made listens with a careful ear.    Peace. Todd

Tears

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.                                   -Washington Irving

What is compassion? It is not simply a sense of sympathy or caring for the person suffering, not simply a warmth of heart toward the person before you, or a sharp clarity of recognition of their needs and pain, it is also a sustained and practical determination to do whatever is possible and necessary to help alleviate their suffering. TJS

When someone you love dies...

I have worked with hundreds of people who have lost someone close to them.  Death comes as a part of the natural cycle of life.  The challenge is that we never know when.  I held my brothers hand as he died and I recall the sudden gasp of his last breath.  My physical relationship with him ended and I was astonished at how frail these bodies are.  I want to say that it changed me in some powerful way or that I am happy to have a spirit filled relationship with him, but I can't.  The truth is I miss him.  The long walks bantering about philosophy, late nights drinking pints of beer or the hours we spent at 'fringe festivals' grading the plays we saw. 

I can accept death as a part of my journey, but I am more profoundly moved by the intensely personal experience it can be.  I changed as he died.  Perhaps it made me stronger or sometimes I think, more vulnerable.  Either way I find myself being more mindful of my days.  Listening to the wind, following the pattern of bird songs or listening to the laughter of children.   Sometimes I simply marvel at the sound of my breath.  TJS

Christmas isn't always Merry

Christmas isn't always Merry. Often the holiday brings memories of people we've lost. This is my second Christmas since my brother and mother died. They died within four months of each other. In my home Christmas meant that Mark and mom would be here; cooking, laughing, arguing and eating. I know there are many of you out there who have lost someone and like me today you are listening to Christmas carols, roasting a turkey and letting the memories of those you loved wander through your mind. So Christmas isn't always Merry but there can be a sense of celebration for the memories we have and the emotions they tug. So if you shed a tear or ten today let it come. Then smile and celebrate the fact that you allowed someone to become special in your life and that they will forever be a part of the fabric that is your world. Peace to all in the holiday season. TJS.

Loss

Her

And so at the end of the night she had passed.
It came with the loss of something inside like
a dead branch in the thick of a cottony aster.

The pattern of life had changed within the moment
and what I did started to die. The movement to do
faded to grey and I wanted to sleep.

To pull the brittle twig from the brush
and throw it to the burning pile. Like a piece of
soul or spirit lodged in thought uprooted and
consumed in flames.

On this morning she was gone and I was a child again.

TJS, 2008