This one is going to be written in sombre colour! I was not going to write today, ( I thought you all need a break from my ramblings) and yet…here I am.
Loss.
We all lose in life, we loose a race, we lose the promotion, we lose our contacts on our phones, we lose our keys, we loose things we were holding just a second ago and search for an hour till we find it in the fridge.
But what about the losses that are so severe, so hard, so deeply painful that we feel we can never get over them. How do we move on? how do we cope? what skills do we need to urgently acquire in order to survive. How do we move from the black pit of despair in to a pit from where we can see the light shining above us, and from there crawl out of the pit, in to the rain, and then move from the rain to the cloud, from the cloud to the sun etc.
I have suffered losses, my baby who died after only being here for a time that was too short. A daughter who does not live with me, a father who G-d took back to early. Last week I found out about another loss which will be coming along in a few short weeks, my closest, dearest most wonderful friend who is my “sista from another mista” is moving abroad. She is to me a sister, a post to lean on when I am falling and the friend with which I have shared the best and worst of times.
When I think about this particular loss, it is different, she is not going to be lost, we can talk every day, we can see each other on our phones, computers etc, but I know she will not be round the corner, there will be no more messages saying “what u up to? lets go out for a bit” or “can you pop round”. So I am considering this a loss.
It may be dramatic to put her moving in the same category as the other losses, but every time something like this happens it opens up that box for me, and the losses I have experienced become as if on a cinematic screen in front of me, My father lying, grey in colour on the hospital bed, my baby, his breathing forced by machines, watching the numbers on the heart monitor obsessively, watching as they went lower and lower, every fibre of my being screaming at me to do something to stop those numbers getting any lower but being completely helpless, my daughter, having her leaving party, she must have been so confused, my heart in pieces, knowing I needed to do this for her.
So how do we deal with the box of pain when it opens? do we ever get over loosing someone? I do not believe we do, the pain never goes, it just gets different, people say time is a great healer, and now after all these years I can finally agree, but just as someone who has had a pace maker inserted we are never fully healed, there is always that glimmer, that pain waiting to rush out at us again. It can come at the most surprising times, when we see a child in the street who looks like the ones we lost, when we meet people who have given birth, when we read horrific stories of children suffering in the news, when we walk past a shop window advertising something which would have been perfect for our child. When friends lose a parent to young, or you meet someone who asks you how your father is.
So often thoughts will pass through my head, almost guilt in a way, when I hear of children of older ages passing away, telling me that my grief, my pain is unjustified as I only held my angel for a day or two, but I know, with my whole heart that a child is our child no matter how long they have been on this earth for, we grieve for what could have been not what was, we grieve because that primal need to care for our little ones has been cruelly ripped away from us, we cry because we are so alone in our grief.
We learn to become the person the world thinks we are, even when we are not. The box of the lost has its own little vault in our brain, sometimes the vault will open and the pain will flow out of it, but we learn to shut, lock and place the key in a special place.
My friend moving, is sorrow, but I am happy for her, for the life she has for so long wanted and deserved is going to be hers. This is a loss for me, which has opened my box, but, I am grateful, and blessed that we live in a generation where keeping in touch has never been easier, and so I will try to close the loss box, and create a new box for her I think I will call it the “determination box” the determination to stay her best friend and never lose her.
Lots of love
Sara
The Musings of Sara 
Speechless…😢
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