On the grief of losing the love of a beautiful friend

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. (Martin Luther King Jr., Trumpet of Conscience)

Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond cutter’s tools. (Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet)

I have, of course, broached this subject in other ways, but never, I think, with the same weight that I now carry in my heart. What encourages me to continue writing these little essays, which have taken on a more discernibly urgent mood in recent times, is not only the wonderful support with which you have received them, but also the knowledge that I am speaking to realities common to the human condition. Indeed, many of you will have lived through experiences much like those I have described and, in many cases, have addressed them far more eloquently than I could hope to do. And, yet, it is good that we speak to one and other in such ways, meeting in those places of vulnerability where so much of our hidden truth resides.

There is a suffering that can, for those who live with chronic pain, go deeper than the ache felt in the bones. It is the grief of being rejected by someone we love. These are the people whose faces fill our photo albums and with whom we have shared some of the largest moments of joy and sorrow in our life. Their absence can leave a wound that could seem impossible to heal. The relationships we had with these souls are of different degrees, and each loss brings with it a discrete sorrow to the heart. Here I will reflect on the loss of a like-minded friend, one who had for a season stuck closer than a brother (Prov. 18:24). The importance and archetypal beauty of friendship has been celebrated throughout the arts, and magnificently in the great epic narratives of Homer, to the searing confession of St. Gregory Nazianzus on the loss of his friend St. Basil the Great, and the notable essays on the same subject by C. S. Lewis:

For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother. (Homer, The Odyssey)

Do not leave me here;  / Do not, I beg: I swear upon your tomb, / Never will I forget you and move on; / I could not, if I wanted. (St. Gregory Nazianzus, Poems)

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

Friendship is also attributed to our Creator and is a recurring motif common in the Scripture, and in Buddhism it is considered essential to one’s spiritual growth:

And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. (Jm. 2:23)

The friend who is a helper, the friend through thick and thin, the friend who gives good counsel, and the compassionate friend; these four are friends indeed. The wise understand this and attend on them carefully, like a mother her own child.  (The Buddha, Sigalovada Sutta)

When Jesus Christ himself, was abandoned by his closest disciples during the hours of his most gruelling testing, at the Gethsemane temptation when they would fall asleep (and no less than on three occasions), and then on Calvary where outside of John they all would later flee, he allowed for the frailty of the human condition and freely gave of the benefit of the doubt knowing that: “[t]he spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). Later he would build his Church on St. Peter “the Rock”, the one who had also denied him three times at the courtyard of the high priest. This is what a great benevolence a friend can deliver to another by crushing the silence and allowing for love and compassion to lift the other to their most utmost potential. Yes, as friends, we, too, do possess such ‘godly’ power to raise the other by not too quickly extinguishing the prospects of reconciliation. This was the same with Saints Peter and Paul, strongly antagonistic the one towards the other, to eventually reconcile and then to lay down the first foundations of the Church. So we do not give up hope. The seed that once gave birth to the oak though now made complete, lives on in the acorn. Friendships that were originally built on love are rarely completely extinguished, we sometimes only need but a little distance to allow for nature and for the deeper humanity to take their course.

One common trap in our grief is to deny that these individuals were true friends in the first place, and so we start to look for those ‘obvious’ patterns that might now prove it. Every previous slight or let down take on another more sinister connotation. Such counsel is short-term comfort and in the end doomed to failure. It can only contribute to an ongoing agonising. To begin with, it seems to me, to be self-contradictory. Such a negative perspective could suggest the same for ourselves. That is, were we too, then, not true friends? Relationships built over years of genuine concord and treasured experiences cannot be pretended. It does not take too long for fakery to manifest itself. And so, they were true friends to us, as we were to them. For this precious gift alone, it is good to be thankful. It is a difficult truth, especially if we have been deeply wounded, to accept that in almost every instance there was a strong love between the two souls. It is only natural when the pain goes deep, to look for any way out that might alleviate some of that suffering. Halfway through one of the most fabulous violin performances of Vivaldi’s “Winter” strings from Ray Chen’s bow broke. He continued to play. The music did not suffer and it went its course. Despite this visible disruption, the beauty of the score was not diminished.

The word concord comes from the Latin concordia (meaning harmony or agreement), which is built from con- (together) and cor (heart). Literally, it means "hearts together". It entered English through Old French (concorde) in the 12th century to mean peace, union, or friendly agreement. (Wiktionary)

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The grief we live through, this intense emotional sorrow ordinarily associated with mourning, is caused by the "remembrance of things past," to recall Marcel Proust. A photograph; a song; a road; a scent; a Christmas gathering. A laugh you hear in the shopping mall that you would swear was your friend. Then you see the beloved. It IS them. They walk straight past or worse, they turn their back on you. These are excruciating moments should you experience them. These souls inhabit big pieces of our life. One can hurt from a difficult disease but the pain at such a blatant rejection can stay with you for years. It can cut in places deeper than that ache to the bones. So what happened? A miscommunication? An innocent mistake? A misplaced word spoken in anger? Not being there at a needful time because you could not. Ultimately, not being that ‘perfect’ friend. Who can be—and who has been able to measure up perfectly to that ideal? Yet, here is the archetypal form of the brother friend, to accept the one and other within the full realm of the graces, to be wise enough to at least accept, that we are all liable at some unforeseen moments in our life to fall short of the mark.

How can one respond to this unspeakable pain of a beloved’s silence? The recognition that we are all fragile and broken in the secret places, goes some way towards not only battling this grief but to also have compassion for our friend, they, too, are carrying their own cross in life. We are all looking to be loved and to be rescued from those burdens that haunt our hearts the most. Spending the remainder of our lives blaming the other for their silence will ultimately prove annihilating. Being the first to reach out requires both courage and vulnerability, and some friendships are worth the risk of a second rejection. That said, repeated attempts are not good for either of the souls. One might become more hardened in spirit, while the other could plunge further into grief. So there will come an hour when we must accept that things are unlikely to change. It will be the time to stop interrogating ourselves and the past in search of answers. This will be the moment when we have to make our own closure and not wait indefinitely for the other to deliver it. Our worth and dignity are not diminished when we are rejected. Self-identity and selfhood are not dependent on another’s perception of our presence and value in the world.

Our life’s journey and the gifts that we can offer to others and build on already existing meaningful friendships, do not all of a sudden come to an end because we might have been “ghosted”—and such a terrible word. Though very difficult at first, this rejection which in the beginning could appear to us to be impossible to overcome, will open the door to not only a profounder awareness of the self, but also to the founding of new friendships—and oftentimes in those places we might not have expected—on a city street in the middle of a downpour or in the corridors of a hospital ward. These new friendships will play their own significant part in carrying us through to the remainder of our lives. When our final days arrive, whenever that might be, we will be surrounded by those who have truly loved us, who have recognised the good intentions of our hearts, and who have inspired the best in us. As difficult as it might now be to believe, this terrible pain inflicted by those who were once dearest friends will, at that last hour be entirely forgotten, for they too would have by this time entered even more deeply into our hearts.

How Does One Deal With A Life Changing Moment

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Cor. 4:16-18)

How does one respond to a new challenge in life, when almost overnight, everything changes dramatically? You look in the mirror and you recognise that your old physical self is to a large extent gone. There is denial. There is grief. And yes, in the middle of the tears and self-pity, an anger that could surprise you. Perhaps worst of all, the onset of a gnawing despair. You are in fact experiencing the inner and outer metamorphosis. All the self-help books in the world are of no use, for their premises are no longer relevant to you. The man looking back at you is not the man you once knew. The body you inhabited for sixty-five years can no longer serve you in the same ways. One can pretend to the world that these natural human emotions do not apply to them, that you have been able to rise beyond such fallible responses. Yet, and this much I must say, if you have belonged to the community of believers, and you have seen abundant evidence of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, at work in your life, then you will not question your faith nor put away the trust in the providence of your Creator. But your hitherto public stoicism, and those standard rejoinders to the problem of pain, as theologians have long framed this paradox—so much suffering in the world and still at the same time the goodness of God—will be thrown into upheaval and shaken to its core.

What this “thorn of the flesh” is for the present writer is entirely irrelevant. It is not the affliction itself that is of concern to him, nor is his experience at all unique. What he describes here is an undergoing that belongs in whole or in part, to at least some of his gentle readers. The question, then remains, how does one deal with a life-changing moment that has to some degree, made different much of one’s life. The saint, for there are saints who either live here in our midst or in monasteries or in faraway deserts, will reckon this as part of the soul’s journey toward redemption. Then there are too, the stoics, who courageously accept it all as part of the greater story of the cycle of life. But there is something very much in common to both of these positions, the acknowledgment whether be it manifest or tacit, of the joyful-sorrow of life and of the inevitability of our report here in this world one day coming to its close. From Siddhartha Gautama, to Socrates, to Saint Paul, to Blaise Pascal, to Martin Heidegger, to Sophrony Sakharov, to Viktor Frankl, to Irvin D. Yalom, to Dean Rickles, this ontological acquiesce is there in every profound thinker that has walked the earth. There are those winter seasons in which, as my dear friend Joseph Carvalko writes in one of his enthralling essays, that we are drawn to think of our souls in different ways until that time when they reach "that final purpose" (Paradox of Hope).

Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. (Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning)

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So we live each day grateful for all we have been taught, not despairing of the new stories we will now live through, and ultimately grateful for these additional narratives we might now write down. For these things, the precious fruits of courage and perseverance are not at all outside the realms of reality and have been manifested in the lives of so very many. And more recently we witnessed this in the life of my late and much beloved Momma. Not long before she left us she “woke” from her deep sleep and in English (her second language which to this point she had almost completely forgotten) to say: “I saw Jesus. He said He loved me.” Her countenance was amazingly bright. Of course, one can interpret these fabulous words in different ways. We took them at their face value, and at that moment she gave us a vision of meaning above and beyond what I could hope to describe here, that change when even at its most difficult hour is not bereft of the light. Suffering can only be met head on, there are no shortcuts to the problem of pain. There on those hard edges of Gethsemane, where the human spirit is tested that it might be refined as gold, awaits the revelation of our true name written on the white stone (Rev. 2:17).

Our eyes and hearts can become opened to astonishing depths of love (now re-defined and re-experienced on account of our new condition) and to all-encompassing fields of compassion once only imaginable when we were at our very best—those days when we refused to chase away the birds from our fruit-trees and considered the practise of forgiveness as the highest expression of agape.

Even with all of the hard knocks and heavy collisions along the way, we all have a fabulously rich story to tell. Whether we can write it down or not, will matter only very little. The narrative will take on its own life to become our legacy. I remember an elderly monk from Mount Athos, Father E., who would refuse to wear laces on his boots. One afternoon after the refectory I summonsed the courage to ask him ‘why’ [and here I must confess to paraphrasing him a little]: “One must be prepared and on time for the unexpected.”

On the many different faces of loss

Source: https://blog.sleepingangel.com/?p=2932

Loss makes us feel incomplete

Loss makes us feel incomplete, for some time it can change us. How we feel about ourselves, and how we might present to others. There is a contraction to our perception. That is, how we might see and understand things. We instinctively put limits on our prospects. We don’t like the feeling of something “gone missing”. It’s like that uncomfortable feeling we get when we see a coffee table or a chair without one of its legs. Sometimes it can simply come down to symmetry and ballast.

Why do we feel the impact of loss so acutely

What is loss? “[t]he fact or process of losing something or someone”. It is etymologically related to the Old English los for ‘destruction’. This is what it can feel like at its worst, to have been broken apart. In the Old Norse los was used for the “breaking up the ranks of an army”. In divers ways we could feel ‘lessened’ or ‘inferior’. Made weaker by our loss. Consider a marriage which breaks down with one partner walking out on the other. This can cause for one of the partners to feel a loss of dignity and self-confidence. When a young person fails an examination, they might question their intelligence, again suffering a loss of self-belief. Our personalities are diminished, we believe or otherwise convince ourselves. Others might during a moment of cruelty make sure to convey to us, that we have lost some of our shine. We are made to feel humbled before our peers and friends. Nobody for instance, wants to hear these dreadful words which can stay with us a lifetime, “I have lost respect for you.” The hurt compounded immeasurably if it happens that it is undeserved. 

On the question of loss and its many faces

Every moment of our lives we are losing something. Our brain cells die in the thousands per second. As we age our hair falls out. We lose our teeth, our eyesight dims, and so too our vigour. We can feel ‘destruction’ going on about in our own body. And then to discern its evident dent on the bodies and minds of our older loved ones. We lose them too, and people comfort us, they “share in our loss”. Then the hours and days that we ourselves have left remaining on the earth, these, too, are lost. The question is then, how do we cope with loss and what are the different types of ‘loss’? Sometimes we are at a “loss for words”; or are made to “lose face”; we can “lose our peace”; we “lose our memory”; or “lose hope” and even “lose our mind”. People also “lose their self-belief” and can also “lose their faith”. We have all of us, lost things. Lost something. It can be natural or forcible. And our response to loss can reveal us to the world. It tests us. Loss can denude us. “Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.” (Haruki Murakami)

What can we give to people who have suffered loss

How do we respond to others who are experiencing loss? The first thing is not to patronize. Nobody likes to feel they are being talked down to. The best way is to begin with: “I might not know exactly what you are feeling right now, but I, too, have experienced loss.” Almost always there is common ground to be found in another’s loss. It is best to remain silent for a while, and only to listen. Oftentimes we can help replace that which has been lost, a replacement toy or a new pet for a child, or a favourite book or a pair of reading glasses. But other times the loss is heartbreaking and enduring. The loss of a loved one. This is irreplaceable. This movement of charity towards the other will require the marvellous charisms of empathy and compassion. Each situation will require a different approach for there are many different types of losses, and each of these will be felt differently. If someone is grieving allow them to grieve, do not be tempted to tell them ‘how’ to grieve. Severe psychological or mental pain is personal and some things cannot be “fixed”. It is good that you are there. Empathy and compassion, to have ‘feeling’ for and to ‘co-suffer’ with the other, will open up our hearts to the anguish of the other’s loss. So we listen, we try to walk in the other’s shoes. We do not turn away. Sometimes we might even be as the ‘good shepherd’ to go after the ‘lost sheep’ (Lk. 15:3-7). “Loss” could become a mission of seeking out the wounded. 

Do not feel harried or be too quick to replace what is lost 

Sometimes we might panic and hurry to replace what is lost without too much thought or proper consideration for the outcomes. This rush to replace what has been lost, that is, to quickly fill the vacuum, can introduce other more hurting and lasting losses. It can lead from one mistake to another. Like an amateur painter who in trying to remove one smudge will inadvertently create a dozen more. If something is taken from us which, for example, we reckon to be rightly ours, we  could be tempted to retaliate without thinking through the consequences. A more discerning response could yield the better result. Bad choices can only lead to further experiences of loss and disappointment. The rush to find a new partner, for instance, which is not uncommon, can lead to further loss of self-esteem and heartache. I like very much how Ann Voskamp has put it, “[i]n our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.” So wait, let us pull back for a season, re-organize ourselves to ‘count our losses’. Then we can during our quiet time make those new plans in moving forward. For those who belong to believing communities, it is prayer which will inspire the next movement.

How loss can oftentimes be good for us 

We are too often conditioned even from our earliest times to the reckoning that ‘loss’ is unavoidably bad for us. “Loss of playtime” let’s say, and later to be upgraded to “loss of privileges”. It then becomes a conditioning exercise, behave and things will be restored, with the result being, reflection time or alternatives can be overtly discouraged. This in itself could be the bigger loss. When I have experienced loss, whether that could be status or health, that is, loss on a personal level, I accept the early days will be hard. Then I tell myself, this has been for the good, because I have acquired new knowledge to do with resilience and a deeper faith in those things, I hold to be true. I am still alive and new words and definitions have been gifted to me. I can now grow further into my potential. It can soften my heart. It can break it. This makes it easier for revelation to enter deeper into its folds. Loss, too, could be good for us in this way, upon realizing that something is “missing” we might be as the woman who having ten silver coins loses one, to then “light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it” (Lk. 15:8-10). 

A telling Old Testament story

Joseph’s “long coat of many colours” (Gen. 37:3) brought him into conflict with his older brothers for it reinforced to them that he was their father’s, Jacob, favourite son. On account of their envy they conspired to sell him into slavery after having initially planned to kill him! The story is one of the most well-known from the Old Testament. Joseph owing to his prophetic gift ultimately rose to a high position in the land of Egypt, indeed to the highest most official position next to the Pharaoh. There came a time of reconciliation which shocked his brothers, but Joseph cognisant to the divine providence of God understood that ‘evil’ [and in this case a terrible loss of homeland, trust, and family] is not always what we might assume it to be: “But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:18-21).

When the loss seems to us too unbearable

There are those losses which will seem too unbearable to us. Here, too, there is a way through this aching. We know this, for not few have been to such fiery places after even the most dreadful of losses, have been scorched, and returned to share their testimony. But we will have to ultimately work through this labyrinth and come to terms with it, for ourselves. This is the hardest truth, “[w]hat is to give light must endure burning” (Viktor Frankl). Bitterness and anger are normal human reactions. Yet we should be especially weary that these emotions do not keep too long in the heart which is our ‘spiritual organ’ and functions in an analogous way to the eye, filtering darkness and light. Change following loss can, and does hurt, and it will often hurt a lot, but it can make all the difference. It is temperature shock which hardens steel. It is intense heat which changes molecular structure. Franz Kafka who was fascinated with ‘transformation’ considered “patience” very high on the list of virtues. So endurance, once more, becomes the big key. It took Christ an eternity to reveal his blinding glory to his creation, “where his face shone like the sun” at his Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1f.). Allow for time and grace to make the necessary changes, similarly to hitherto unknown colours, created with the passing of the years on natural landscapes. “When all else is lost,” wrote the epigrammatic Christian N. Bovee, “the future still remains.” I know, too well, sometimes it can be like breaking your knuckles on steel. Some pain will not go away, but with time it will be lessened. But keep steadfast, day by day. Ultimately, that is the greatest secret. And we, all of us, know this to be true. 

Sometimes, too, we just need to lose things

Sometimes, too, we just need to lose things. ‘Stuff’ which is weighing us down, or causing us harm. Toxic relationships, for example. Addictions. Bad habits. Phobias. Things which are possible to overcome. These types of losses should never frighten us, but on the contrary, they should fill us with the most wonderful of all the expectations, lit., “an awaiting”. Like the very eager, but controlled trombones, in Shostakovich’s 9th Symphony. Or the terminal buds of lotus roots in pools which will bud when the temperature is just right. 

Random Thoughts (3)

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The most unmistakable expression of Love is compassion. If I do not suffer with the other or at the very least if I do not try to alleviate the pain of the other the best I can, I have done nothing. My art, too, it will mean nothing.

A friendship which demands ‘my enemies are your enemies too’ is one that needs to be quickly broken. It will destroy the one and rob the other. Do not permit for another to exercise any form of dominion over the arc of your embrace.

The world resists us all, both the righteous and the unrighteous. We are all subject to gravity and to the unbearable weight of grief and loss. There is none amongst us who desires to be hated more than the need to be loved. And in the middle of all this we shift between the states of lukewarm.

We make use of noise to numb us to our wounds. We are all wounded and seek out different ways to forget. This is one of the principal reasons why social media has taken hold of the world and choking it of its life-force. It has become increasingly painful to think and to swim upstream.

First the eye becomes corrupted then the heart. That is, the flesh first wages war against us and then should we lose this battle, it is the turn of the heart which is the seat of the soul. This is where the hardest of all battles are to be fought, that is, in the heart. Here it is where most is to be gained and most is to be lost.

Why is it we so quickly tire of carnality and become too soon bored with all manner of sensual pleasure? Is it not the case that we are for the most part looking for someone to speak to? To say: this is who I am, see me, in all of my nakedness and trembling.

The other of the great deceptions is that technology will solve most of our problems. But we have found that for every advance new problems are created. And even more alarmingly we are creating autonomous systems which will neither thirst nor hunger. On top of all of this, they will not forget.

And yet life really is beautiful, to be celebrated and to be lived out to its end. Satisfying your thirst with an icy glass of water; moments spent loving another human being; saying I love you for the very first time. For such simple pleasures as these and many more, life can really be beautiful.

Do not die without trying your best to become the man and woman you were meant to become. Aim for the highest in you and make that good reach towards the fullness of your capacity. For one day beginning with those moments just before your death, the man or woman you were intended to become will confront you for the last time. They will give you their hand and you will be left with no other option but to take it.

Few things are sweeter than the practice of forgiveness from a heart which overflows with the rivers of mercy. Few things are bitterer to the spirit than a forgiveness which is given but not forgotten. We find forgiveness difficult because we often confuse it as a pardon for the act itself.

At any given moment when you look into the eyes of your neighbor irrespective of their office in life, there you see the Christ before you. You will discern Him more clearly in the eyes of those who mourn (Matt. 5:4). To think too highly of ourselves is the surest way to becoming lost.

Rocks and pebbles exist in a community of cooperation. They do not discriminate in the presence of the other, nor do they heckle or shove for position. They wait in quiet offering shade and protection to the life around them. Some are under the soil, others covered in moss, and many are under the water shifting only under the draw of nature. They wait patiently to be discovered one afternoon as you recite the Beatitudes.

A thousand winters, written like this, could be no more than a week. All of a sudden, perspective is God.