Death is never a welcome visitor.
As much as we’d like to wish it away, it comes, relentless
and uninvited. And death never seems to come at just the right
time. Sometimes it comes too early, sometimes too late.
Is there ever a right time for death’s visit?
Sometimes death is not an enemy. Death
can bring a merciful end to a life
that has been racked by pain or physical
or
mental
incapacity. But even then, we are left with heavy hearts
and troubled souls. We loved those
we lost so much that we want
to
keep them close to us, in our hearts forever. Saying goodbye
is so difficult for us, letting them go is so painful.
And, sometimes, it’s easier if we just let them stay with us, and hold
on to them for dear life. We want them to be part of our lives
in the future just as they were in the past. How can we possibly
go on without them, our love for them, and their love for us?
With them, we had life. Without them, we feel empty inside.
But must we feel so empty? Is clinging to them always such
a good idea? Won’t clinging to them slow down our continuing
growth as men and women who deserve love, passion, and contentment?
It’s the way of the world for people to die and for us
to live on (and love on) after they’ve gone. We have a
hard time saying goodbye to our loved ones who’ve died,
and because of this, we often have a hard time getting on with
our lives. We all know people whose loved ones died more than
a decade ago, but who still have problems today grieving and
moving on. Nothing has changed for them since that sad day when
death came to visit. It’s as if their loved ones are still
there, living and breathing. In these situations, the living
can’t let go and they can’t move on. They’re
stuck. And as long as they can’t get unstuck, the dead
for whom they grieve are still alive, while the grievers who
still live and breathe are deadened to life, unable to live fully.
Something is wrong here, upside down,
and the grievers know it and feel it.
The dead are alive, and the living
are dead.
This
is not what was supposed to happen. The dead were supposed
to die, and the living were supposed to adjust to their
new lives.
What we hope for is life with vitality, but what we
too often get is continuing pain and
broken hearts.
It’s as simple as this: If the dead aren’t allowed
to die, the living won’t be allowed to live.
As hard as it is to let go, that is precisely
what we must do.
We are most challenged when we have to give back
something that was dear to us. Our world teaches
us well how
to acquire things,
but not how to return them. We’re like children
who don’t
want to share – our toys, our possessions,
our loved ones. We want to keep them with us forever,
but we can’t.
This story helps us understand how often,
and in how many diverse ways, we can
carry around with
us what
we should
let go.
Even we rabbis
like to share a Zen story now and then,
and this one has become
one of my favorites:
Two monks set out on a long journey.
After a while, they came to the shore of
a river,
where
they saw
a beautiful
young woman
who needed to get to the other side. One
of the monks picked her up and carried
her through
the
deep water,
to the other
side of the river, then he put her down on
the shore. He said goodbye,
and the two monks continued on their way.
Twenty minutes later, the second monk
chastised the first, “Brother,
you did a terrible thing back there. You know we are not supposed
to touch a woman.”
The first monk turned peacefully to his
friend and said, “Brother,
I put her down twenty minutes ago. Why are you still carrying
her?”
That seems to be our problem, as well.
We continue to carry those who have left
us.
We miss them
so much that
we don’t want
to put them down. We continue to carry them around with us, hoping
that somehow that means they’re still alive. But, alas,
all is for naught. They have died, but we’ve not yet truly
said goodbye to them.
They are dead, yet still alive. We are
still physically alive, yet spiritually
dead. Something
is terribly
wrong when we
live like this, and we feel it every
single day of our lives.
We must learn to “lay them gently down.”
And
God Created Hope for Me Too ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Learning
Through Loss
