When a Piece goes Missing

 Hello Everyone, as always I hope this post finds you well and maybe even looking forward to the holiday season, although I’m well aware it can signal a time of stress for many. Before I go on, I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to all of you who reached out with your kind words regarding why this post is later than normal. For those who don’t know, a dear friend lost her mother recently and out of respect for their family, I decided to leave writing anything for a few days. Actually, it was this sad event and a few things in my own life which ultimately started me thinking about what to write today.

I think when most of us reach a certain age, we have been confronted by loss, it first happened to me when I was in my teens and I know it had a profound and lasting effect on me. When talking about writing this post, I was asked how I was going to describe what it feels like to lose something or someone. After much thought, it seems to me, it’s as if you have been shattered, like you’re a thousand jigsaw pieces strewn across the floor but when you slowly put yourself back together again, a piece is missing which you never really find again. If you’re fortunate, the space left is filled with all the love and happy memories you shared with the person who has gone, but you’re never really the same. Aside from that gap, you’re left with such a maelstrom of emotions, obviously there’s grief, but also this can be tinged with anger and frustration as it feels so unfair you’ve had to to lose someone so precious. I’ve known other circumstances when there’s even been some relief, especially when your loved one has suffered for some time. However you’re affected, it’s generally a bewildering and impossibly difficult time, which when you’re in the middle, can feel endless. I was once told, you never really get over losing a loved one, you just get better at living with it and I’ve found that to be true.

But feeling loss is not restricted to someone dying, it can be just as keenly felt when you’re forced to accept, what you believed was going to be your life’s journey, is impossible. Again, there’s the overwhelming sense of injustice, you repeatedly ask yourself, why did this have to happen to me? What did I do that was so bad that I’m being somehow punished? Of course, in reality, we all know sometimes life just doesn’t go the way we had planned but that fact doesn’t make the acceptance any easier, does it? I know over these past weeks, I have certainly struggled to come to terms with some aspects of my own life. As can happen with people with depression, there have been many days when I’ve wanted just to give up, as it felt as if everything I held dear was disappearing before my own eyes. What’s the point of doing anything when it’s just going to be taken away? That question rolled around my mind as if on some endless track and it left me, at times, almost physically unable to move. But as can happen, when I stopped looking inward at myself and looked out again, I saw the posts of my friend who was staying with her mother. She didn’t write often about the illness, instead she focused on the baking they were doing, shared some snippets of conversations and the simple pleasure of just being together. I have to say, it was profoundly moving and unbelievably inspiring to all of us fortunate enough to be a witness-even those who were thousands of miles away.

After reading, I took a long, hard look at myself and I have to admit, it wasn’t easy making eye contact. For way too long, I had focused on everything I felt had been lost from my life and even though it’s true things aren’t going to be as I’d imagined, it didn’t mean it was all over for me. Having seen the way to really make the most of every possible moment and extract every last drop of pleasure from it, it feels almost disrespectful not to try and emulate that example in my own life. 

Finally, back to those jigsaw pieces, even when we do lose a few along the way, very often, we can still see and appreciate the majority of the picture they make-there may be gaps but it can still make sense. I cannot pretend that sharing this revelation can suddenly made the acceptance of loss any easier, it’s still a difficult road. But I do feel, if we can believe the journey is worthwhile, we will ultimately be able to reach a place of peace.

Anyway, that’s possibly enough from me for now, as always stay safe...

Take good care out there xx