Relationship of Presence to Relationship of Memory
A Relationship of Presence to A Relationship of Memory
When loss happens, life drastically changes.
At that time, we may feel shocked if it's sudden. We may feel sadness or hopelessness.
If you have experienced attachment and love, you will experience grief when you lose what you love. One author says that "love and grief are two sides of the same precious coin. One does not - and cannot - exist without the other."
Grief is the human response to love.
I once was asked to come and provide spiritual care to a family. The matriarch has passed. This woman and her husband had been married for 66 years! They'd had a "good life," he said, gently stroking her cheek as tears silently fell from his eyes.
His life and his family's life, like so many others who experience loss, were forever changed. The one they loved was no longer present in the same way and would never be again. What happens next, I wondered to myself.
Just days after this experience, I began to read a book called "The Depression of Grief: Coping With Your Sadness and Knowing When to Get Help" by Alan D. Wolfelt. In this, he says that "grief is not a disease. To be human means coming to know loss as a part of your life." We all experience losses of some sort. And when we do, our relationship to what we lost changes. It shifts. Wolfelt describes it this way,
After the death of someone loved, the shift means slowly and painfully moving from a relationship of presence to a relationship of memory.
WOW - did I ever find that helpful! It put words to the transition and the experience we go through when someone or something loved is lost.
Now, days after reading this, I encountered another situation like what I mentioned above. I found myself deeply observant of language, especially the language of remembrance. It's there.
Let me know in the comments below if you find this helpful? What might be some other ways of thinking about this journey of love and loss and our relationship to it?
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