Necessary Losses is the title of a 1986 book by Judith Viorst. The title intrigued me but the sub-title even more: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow.
(Grown up children (like mine) will recognize Viorst’s most famous children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. We loved that book when they were little people.)
When I first encountered Necessary Losses, I was in a period of deep mourning for my life. I’d lost nearly everything. My family of origin. My marriage. My job. My self-confidence and my center. My “promise of youth.”
What Viorst’s book taught me was that we all go through inevitable losses in life. They are unavoidable. We will lose “our childhood.” We will lose our youth. We will lose our parents. And, eventually, extended family. Then friends.
It is how we grow and change through these losses that we are brought to a deeper perspective, true maturity and fuller wisdom about life.
Oddly, it was this book I was thinking about when I was clearing out a storage locker yesterday. The contents of many boxes reflected my life back to me. An agenda for a planning meeting. Articles I’d published. School reports for one or the other of my children. Random recipes and receipts from everywhere.
It was both freeing and unsettling. Clearly, I had hung on too long to too much stuff. As my energy level dropped in proportion to the amount of stuff I had to go through, I understood why. It is emotional and daunting to revisit the past. My past in any case. It is also exhausting.
I saw my survival through line in the detritus. The contracts I pursued to keep body and soul together. The self-help books that acted as guides and friends when I felt bereft of both. The children’s art that I kept to remind them one day of their younger selves. (I honestly don’t think they care all that much. A mother’s predilection, not a child’s.)
Growing older, I can feel myself bracing for the upcoming wave of losses over the next ten years.
When you are younger, the death of a friend or acquaintance is shocking and seemingly random. We celebrate together as a community and memorializing that death is a noteworthy event. We go to the funeral as a community. We share remembrances of the departed and swap jokes they used to laugh at. It is a bonding experience.
Then I remember my mother once went to the funeral of three friends in one day. We are still in the time of “one-offs” when among the condolences, we dutifully deploy “s/he died too young.”
We see ourselves in the remembrances in the obituary. We remember rocking out to Tom Petty in the basement together. Furtively getting high on illicit weed from questionable sources.
We meet their adult children and marvel at how much they look like the parent – our friend – that they just lost. The culling has begun.
It is for the best that the wisdom we gain about death as we get older does not preoccupy us when we are young. Persistent thoughts of death and dying are deemed pathological in our youth. In youth, those thoughts are often treated as symptoms of a mental condition, like depression or suicidal ideation.
In old age, those thoughts can become constant companions. After attending so many funerals and reading so many obituaries, we aren’t surprised by death anymore. If we are wise, we prepare for it every day we are living.
We all know there are “no guarantees” in life. An infant can expire as well as the octogenarian.
I decided some time ago to walk with death. Aware it is there and standing by. But not yet invited to the party. I have too much living and exploration still ahead of me. I think.
This attitude has been both life-affirming and life-changing. I am philosophical about death compared to what I was in my youth. Then the thought of death or a terminal illness could make me white with terror. Looking back, I think my greatest fear was dying before I had actually lived.
No one knows the internal crater of pain and emptiness as well as the recently bereft. It is not a universal reaction, of course. Some deaths bring more relief than sadness. That is a loss for all involved in that particular passing.
I accept death’s inevitability now. I know it will take precious loved ones from me. That constant, hovering possibility focusses me more on living life now. I make the apple galette when asked. I watch a movie I’m not crazy about because he enjoys it.
This is not about suppressing or ignoring my own needs or sense of self. Because what I need most now is for my dearest to live happy and healthy for as long as possible. As that is my ultimate goal, the details of how I get there aren’t as important.
On with the day and dealing with the next batch of boxes. Sifting through memories. Even expressing gratitude for the hideousness of the task.
At least, I am still here and able to go through them – a privilege denied to many.
Expressive Compulsive 