Loss...

Loss eh, what is it all about? People experience a spectrum of loss on a daily basis, from losing something worthless or menial such as a post-it note with a small reminder on, that’s fallen off of the cover of their diary along the way, through the hassle of losing a set of keys, right up to the pinnacle of loss, the death of a loved one.

Although my life hasn’t been long and I’ve not been through many of the hardships that people can live through, I have suffered loss. I have lost the aforementioned post-it note, the keys (on a scarily regular basis), and friends and family.

There is no point arguing that loss doesn’t hurt, it does. It is a simple fact that human beings feel loss, I think though it is down to the individual how much this loss affects their life. It is character building in the cruellest sense. Coping with loss is something that we all do individually and loss itself is something that shapes us by its very nature.

To some losing that little note with a message on might not be the end of the world, however to some it can seem like an insurmountable deficit. Imagine if you will that the little note said, “Remember to put the bin out”. Not a huge problem if you lose it and forget, your bin is fuller than normal for a week. However if you now consider that the little note that has been lost was from a loved one that you no longer see, it becomes a very different scenario. That little note that is now lost has huge emotional attachments and meaning and leaves a hole so immense that it can feel like the world is imploding around you.

The loss that I have experienced in life hasn’t been as trivial as that, but at the same time hasn’t been as intense as some losses that anyone reading this may have encountered. I can tell you what has happened and how it felt and what I think, if you want to stop and listen for a bit…

The first experience of loss that I clearly remember was when our old neighbour Renee died. I must have been about 8 or 9, I could be wrong it was a fair time ago. I remember that it was a school morning and my Mum was helping me get ready, and another of our neighbours, Les came to the back garden and leaned over the fence, my Mum went up to him and told her that Renee had died. Now this wasn’t entirely unexpected, as she had been suffering with cancer for a while, I can’t tell you how long for or anything like that, as I was a child and my perception of time was much different back then. Anyway, my mum came back down to the house, clearly crying, she was much closer to Renee than I was, and she told me that Renee had died. Now I clearly remember sitting there in our living room, head in my hands crying. However looking back at it with 15 or so years more living under my belt, I am not sure what I was crying for. At the time I don’t think that I fully understood the consequences of Renee’s death and what the loss would entail. I remember knowing that death was permanent and that I would not see her anymore, that for her it was over, but I didn’t appreciate that time is a good healer. I don’t want to sound heartless, Renee was a sweet old lady who was a good friend of the family but I didn’t realise at the time that in the grand scheme of things a neighbour was a loss that is something that you can recover from fairly easily. That isn’t to say that I have ever forgotten her, here I am 15 years later writing about her, but the pain isn’t there anymore. The feeling of something missing, a part of you that is no longer there. She is now a memory of a time where I was a child, and life was easier, I tend to remember the times in her kitchen eating biscuits, and her dog barney, and her husband Jim. Like I said time is a good healer.

I’ve had deaths in the family too, my great Nan and great uncle died. These again were times where I felt loss. The bigger of the two being that of my great Nan. Now I feel like I should try and justify myself here, and apologise if I cause any offence, as I could come across as heartless and mean, but I can assure you that I have the greatest respect for Nan and Brian, this account is just my perspective of the situations. If I cause any distress or offence I am sorry…

When Brian died it came as a bit of a shock, he died suddenly and without warning. It was obviously a distressing time for the family members that were closest to him, however I did not know him that well. I knew of him but thinking back probably saw him, for the last time, about 5 years before he died. I remember him as a kind, witty man who always had a smile and something to say to me, but other than that I do not remember much of him. When I was at his funeral, I remember looking around the crematorium and seeing different levels of grief. This to me is where loss is very subjective, the closer you are to the loss the more you will feel it, and the more it will affect you. Its how you deal with it and move on that are important.

My great Nan was a bit of a different story; she had been suffering with mental deterioration for the last few years of her life. I loved my great Nan, I remember seeing her once or twice a year when I was growing up. She lived above a shop in London and was your stereotypical great old Nan. She used to be so warm and friendly and always was happy to see us. I remember how she used to give me and my brothers goody bags to take back in the car with us, for the journey home. Those were the happy memories of her that I have. Sadly, the last memories I have of her were of her in her room at her nursing home, she was being well looked after, but she wasn’t the woman that I remembered from my childhood. It was sad to see her deterioration, because the last time I had seen her was at her home, she was pottering around and lucid, and not the old lady that sat in front of me on that day, not really remembering who I was. I suppose thinking philosophically about the situation that this made losing her a bit more bearable as you could take comfort in the fact that she was no longer suffering. In reality though the news of her death still had a large impact on me. I was at college and I think it was my Mum who phoned me to tell me. The news hit and me and I absorbed it and dealt with it. It made me sad but I knew that Nan would no longer be suffering and that she would at last be at rest, but I still knew that I would never see her again. I did a pretty good job of suppressing the emotions that I was feeling until I was asked by a friend why I was quiet. When I told her that my Nan had died, it hit me and I could feel tears running down my cheeks. This luckily has been the only time that true loss has hit me and I have outwardly acknowledged it and it has affected me in a direct emotional response. Again however time has given perspective and healing qualities. My Nan is still gone, and that isn’t going to change, but I have the memories of her in her flat, and in the back of the shop, in my mind she is sewing dresses, and making cups of tea, and sitting in her big armchair, talking to us and asking us about school and the things we had been up to. The loss is bearable, and I know that it has changed me as a person, made me more able to take the larger view of the picture…

There is one other type of loss that I want to talk to you about if you are still with me? That’s the loss of friends, and I don’t mean to death, I mean the loss of friends due to time and geographical distance. Friendships are some of the most complicated things in existence, for many reasons, but the loss of is always easy but never pain free.

I have had many friends over the years, and sadly have lost touch with a great deal of them. I’ve talked about this in my other post, The Comedy Of Growing Up.

I think that it is the degradation and eventually loss of these friendships that is the saddest and potentially the most painful. In terms of analysing the effect of this hurt, it isn’t the harsh hit of someone dying, it is more of a slow gnawing feeling of sadness that eats away at you for much longer, until one day you either forget or meet them again.

However this statement is pretty inaccurate, I know from experience that you never truly forget a friend. When someone has been in your life, either for long enough, or in a concentrated amount of time, enough for you to let your guard down and become good friends, how can you really ever forget them? It is like they leave and indelible mark on your soul that will never truly be erased. It is these moments of loss that test the mettle of any friendship. If you stay in touch over the years then it is a solid friendship that deserves to stand the test of time, again time is a good healer, and you can get over it, but as long as the friend is alive, you will always wonder what they are up to, how they are or if they even remember you. I also feel that with social networking it is taking some of the lessons of loss out of friendships, but I have talked about that before, so I won’t bore you with it again!

I think also that age has a lot to do with how we experience loss, it is only lately that it has started to make me think. I am not sure if it is definitely age, but I think it has a lot to do with it. I have met and befriended and lost a lot of people lately, and it starts to make you question the futility of human relationships. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a cynic and I am not depressed, but as soon as you let your defences down and let people in, they leave, or you lose touch and then you move on. I am aware that it is human nature and that it is more than likely a hard wired survival mechanism, but it is one that doesn’t lead to a happy blogger!

I reckon here is probably a good place to start to sum up this ramble, don’t you… I think that loss is a good mechanism of making you appreciate the present, which becomes the past, more than you perhaps do. If loss is in the back of your mind now and then it makes you conscious to make the effort to make the present as good as it can be, as you never know when you might lose the situation or person or object that you are in the present with. Loss also makes you appreciate the past, makes you remember the happy times more vividly and makes the sad times duller in detail. I am almost certain that anyone remembering the loss of something or someone will remember happy times they spent, rather than the sad ones!
Loss also gives you a good grounding for the future. Without loss you have no emotional landmark to judge against, you have no way of knowing what it feels like to lose, and therefore no appreciation of what you have got, and more importantly what it has the potential to be.
I would like to think that loss has a bearing on all of us and shapes our characters for the better. I would say in my case it has helped me to grow and see the larger picture and not to get too hung up on the smaller aspects of the whole.

My words of advice, for what they are worth would be, loss is a strange old thing, try not to let it swallow you up, deal with it in your own way and time and try and remember that something or someone is never truly lost as long as you still have the memories…