Comforting Those Who Grieve, Part IV: Is There a Future?

In Part II of this series, posted on 3/13/16, I reflected on how we tend to idealize, if not idolize, loved ones who have died.  Even after death, or because of it, we may look on our relationship as being ethereal and eternal.  Now, this is fine in a way, but what if

it keeps us from joy and fulfillment in whatever life we survivors still have left?  Are we doomed to live in the past, stuck in a tomb of loss and sadness (and perhaps also regret) for as long as we still have life?

After Pauline died, I remember vividly a painful journal entry. I reflected on how as a youth I wondered if I would ever really fall in love and have that love returned.   In Pauline my dream had come true.  Then I raised the obvious but tormenting question:  if you had such a dream, and it had been fulfilled, but then shattered, can you ever really dream again?  At the the age of 32, were the best days of my life locked forever in the past?

I was stuck in this depressing possibility that threatened to keep me moored to the past and essentially unable to move with any kind of conviction and direction into the future.

This went on for months, but deep inside me a seed of insight was somehow planted, and began to grow.  I do not know the steps that finally brought the following insight to fruition: I can only share what the final result was.

It began with a theological and philosophical insight about life itself.  For all of our efforts at finding love and creating community, in the end, as at the beginning, we are alone.  We arrive in this world alone, although hopefully we will be embraced immediately by love and community.  And, at the end of life, no matter how surrounded by love, community, and intimacy we are, we have to journey ALONE into the next stage of life.

In Michelangelo’s famous painting of the Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel (pictured above), we see the hand of God and the hand of Adam at the moment of birth.  God’s hand lets go of Adam’s and for a moment Adam is alone, until he is embraced by human community.

Death creates the same separation, no matter how brief.  We cling to our dying loved one, refusing to let them go.  But eventually their hand slips out of ours, and they go on to their new life, once again joining the hand of God.

After Pauline died, my greatest longing was for her to return to me.  I would have done or given anything to have her back.  But finally it dawned on me:  what I wanted most in life was unfair to her.  She had already done what we each must do.  She had faced death, gone through it, and now lived in the new reality that was hers.  Did I really want her to come back, and have to go through that process again?  It hit me like a bolt.  What I thought was pure, eternal love, was actually just my selfishness.  I wanted her back for me, not because it was best for her.  And then I saw the truth.  Loving her meant letting her go.  Letting her go to her new life.

This eventually gave way to a companion revelation.  Pauline had gone on to her new life, and now it was time for me to go on to mine.  I didn’t need to feel guilty about leaving her behind.  The truth was, she had left me behind.

We had done everything we possibly could  to stay together.  But inevitably we each must leave even those we love the most, and go “alone” to our new life.

Pauline had found her new life.  Now I needed to find mine.