Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of the holiday season is when someone we love is no longer with us. Whether they are absent through death or some other separating circumstance, this angst can make the holidays almost unbearable. If the loss is fresh, then this is another of the ‘firsts’ we find ourselves being dragged through. If more time has passed since their departure, the pain may not be quite as constant – but can still rise up with gut-wrenching intensity.
My friends, if this is you, my heart is with you. This human journey contains every measure of emotion and experience: from the highest highs, to the deepest sorrows; ecstatic joys, to the cruelest pains. Although we each will walk our seemingly individual paths, no one – absolutely no one! – is exempt from loss. So how do we negotiate the unavoidable sorrows and losses that are part of the human journey?
There is a poignant line in the Tao te Ching that says
“If you open yourself to loss, you are at one with loss
and can accept it completely.”
(Chapter 23, S. Mitchell translation)
For those of us who know loss intimately, this can sound dangerous – won’t opening to it drop us into an abyss of never-ending tears and pain?
Many years ago a dear friend lost her young adult son, ripping her apart with grief. In recounting that time and what came after, she told me that in the wake of his death, she had to make a conscious decision to not close her heart. Although she didn’t know how she could do this, through the dark months ahead, that shard of a decision provided enough breadcrumbs to follow. She kept her heart open not just to the pain of losing her son, but to all feelings. Now some twenty years later, tears can still flow – but so does joy and appreciation for all the richness in her life, both before and after the loss.
Keeping our hearts open sounds like being at one with our loss; rather than suppressing, we let ourselves feel whatever wants to come up. We accept all our feelings, completely. We remain in the flow of all emotions, saying yes to our grief – as well as to all the beauty, love and wonder that life will continue to offer our open hearts.
So if this holiday season highlights a painful absence, receive your feelings in love. Honor them, as you honor the precious gift your beloved has been to you, in all its colors. We cannot control when/how those we love may leave us – but if we lean into our hearts, we remain present to the great river of life. We dance with all that comes our way freely, and ultimately without regret.
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