Acceptance
It takes a lot to accept the loss of someone you love. You start asking yourself the impossible to answer questions. What if I had just done something different? Where is my loved one? Did they suffer? Do they miss me? Are they watching over me? These questions are perfectly normal to ponder. They are also a part of the healing process. They can also be more then frustrating if you seek, but find no answers to. Well, I can not answer those questions with complete certainty, but I think I can come very close, and very comforting.
My story about my best friend Alex teaches me what it takes to make yourself accept that you will never share those laughs, whisper those secrets or have one of those moments where no one speaks but everyone understands, again. It’s a hard won acceptance, but it’s worth the fight.
Alex was my first crush. I met him when I was 7 years old. He was everything that I thought was adorable. He was tiny like me, but full of courage and strength. When we were around 9 we had a conversation on his grandmothers’ couch that was very childlike and extremely adult at the same time.
“What’s this kissing stuff about that has everyone acting stupid?” He asked.
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know because I’ve never kissed a person that wasn’t my mom or dad, and I know it’s supposed to be different when it’s just a friend.”
“Hmm, I think we should try it.” He replied.
“I think so too,” I said, my little nine year old heart fluttering.
This was the first boy I’d ever wanted to kiss. All others before him had been dubbed yucky and not to be touched.
As we experimented with our first kiss, his grandmother and aunt came blasting out of the bedroom behind us, hiding laughter and putting a direct halt on our research. They had overheard us, and had probably contained themselves for as long as they could. One of my fondest memories of Alex, one that brought me so much joy as a child, then so much pain as a teenager who lost her first puppy love. That memory caused me so much pain in the beginning, and so much happiness in the end.
In my experience, it’s harder to lose someone you grew up with, whether they are a sibling, a parent, or a childhood friend. The problem is you remember them in their phases of life, just as you were passing through your own. The day I lost Alex, I didn’t have just the memories of the last couple years, what he looked like the day he died, but I also had the little boy in my head, the one with the bad haircut we made fun of, the same one who I watched go from gangly clumsy junior high school kid to a grown man. I had his whole life to remember, not just a few years or moments. How possible would it even be to honor and cherish what we had, without feeling the hollow loss and letting it take over? It may be very hard, but again, a battle worth fighting for. I had unwillingly just learned a small bit of what Paul’s parents must have felt when they lost their son.
I learned a horrific lesson around midnight of May 1993. I was 19 the year my soul died and my spirit was lost.
“Joy? Hey, come with me, its Alex.” Janet whispered.
I instinctively knew he was dead. I jumped in her car and rode in my own fog to the place Alex and I had been staying. The guilt was the most agonizing thing I had, even to this very day, suffered. Alex had lost his license a few months before he died. I was the only person he trusted to drive his car, to drive him anywhere. He and I and his current girlfriend had been holed up in an apartment together for too long. I felt it was in everyone’s best interest if I took off and gave them some time to be together. It was apparent that Alex didn’t want me to leave him; he wanted to jump in the car with me and take off, as we always did, as kids, as teens, as friends. In effort to keep the peace he stayed that day at his girlfriends’ apartment. No matter how long I live I am sure I will never forget the last conversation I had with my best childhood friend.
“Alex,” I called up to him sitting in the window of the second floor apartment. “Are you sure you don’t want to go anywhere tonight? I swear I don’t mind, Ill stay and we will do something later.”
“Nah, you go ahead and go enjoy yourself. I am not going anywhere tonight,” were the last words I heard my best friend say.
Janet and I drove off, happy chatting young women. It was my last moments of being anything near innocent, and perhaps that is why even then to me, it played itself out as a movie, in frames, choppy and slow motion. That’s how I always see that scene there. I am sure I always will. Pulling into the apartment building that night and seeing several police cars had the same effect on me. I recall my heart banging so loud in my chest I had to glance at Janet to see if she could hear it. As I glanced down into my lap towards my wringing hands I could actually see my heart banging in my chest. Those moments held a surreal quality. As if I was dreaming, or having a nightmare. They seemed fake and entirely deadening to my physical senses. No matter what you have seen or dealt with, there is nothing that can prepare you for the moment when your own emotions take over your actual physical presence in the environment. I’ve accepted them as some kind of tragic movie reels in my life. They play out as if they are dreams or false memories. They are very real indeed.
Not even 4 hours later after being picked up from Alex’s girlfriends house Janet was picking me up and driving me to the end of my life as I knew it. How could I have done this? I’ve killed my best friend. I could have done something. If I only had not left that night, then it would have been me driving his car, capable of doing so, and not the person who had driven him to his death in the four hours I had been separated from him in the last five months. Alex had let someone else drive him that fateful night. That person didn’t deserve to be entrusted with the life of my best friend. Even in that blindingly angry and guilt filled moment, I had to stop to realize that someone else had lost a friend, someone else had lost a son. Absorbed in my intense anger, I still had compassion. Blindingly painful losses teach the soul lessons the heart never wanted to learn. I was the messenger of disaster that night, I did not have to do it, but I took it upon myself, in honor of my love for my friend, to be the one who called all of our closest friends to tell them what had happened. I received a lot of different reactions to my message of our friend’s death. Some were silent, some were openly upset and some seemed to be hearing that the price of gas had just gone up a couple of cents. It occurred to me then that everyone had different ways to deal with tragedies and grief. Even the officers that arrived that night were shaken by this tragedy. I remember when I had first arrived back to the apartment with Janet that I had almost busted through her front door I was so scared, the officers inside looked at me and asked his girlfriend who I was. “His best friend”, I heard her say from what seemed like miles away. They leveled cold gazes on me and asked me if I wanted to be the one who told his aunt and grandmother about his death. I don’t even remember replying; only shaking my head while choking back burning tears and nausea. Even the officers did not want a part in this horror, and I even understood their anger that was misdirected at me when they asked that question so deliberate. At my reply of no, I recall the younger officer shaking his head at me and telling me that he didn’t want to have to tell them either. He had no choice. His eyes said.
It took me 10 years to appreciate how lucky I am that I can say I had a best friend to bury. No one would see it that way in a moment of blind grief, but its true. It took me 12 years to understand that I didn’t cause his death. How does acceptance play its part in your grief? It is the difference between those fond old memories causing heart wrenching, tear jerking pain, or those same memories, causing you private laughter and comfort, soul rending tears or a private moment of fond remembrance. That choice is solely yours to make, to accept.
I’ve been on both sides. It honors my friends to share their stories, it cleanses my soul to be there for even one person who needs a helping hand reaching the conclusions it took me a decade to reach. As hard as it is to do at this moment, please give it a chance to work, it will. I won’t attempt to alter your faith or hope in the world. As a matter of fact, I would be the last one who could say anything vaguely upbeat when the loss was still so fresh. So I won’t patronize you, I will only share the truth, beautiful or ugly as it may be.
If guilt or imagined culpability is keeping you from allowing yourself to grieve for a lost loved one then you need to transfer your energies. Unless you actually first hand murdered your loved one then you are not responsible. While you are sitting there asking yourself, “What could I have done differently?” “What if she/he hadn’t left to come to my house, then maybe they would still be alive.” These questions, although natural, are just misplaced emotions. You are not responsible. If you are responsible, then so is every other friend, family member or acquaintance of your lost loved one who could have, should have or would have if they had known done something different before that moment of passing.
I am not going to preach fate, or destiny here. At age 31, I’m still not quite sure if I believe in those things, or just that we are all chaos contained and bouncing around in a universe waiting for what is our own personal last moments. I am still learning just as you are what this world is about. What it’s stealing from me, and what I am freely giving it is something I am still trying to decipher. I halfheartedly joke with my friends in conversations that I am the same person at 31 that I was at 14. It’s not really as much of a joke as I’d like to think it is. I don’t see that much difference in the way I would cope with something so painful. At 14, it’s quite possible I was even stronger then I am now.
Oh, if I knew then what I knew now, is the only statement I can fathom that reminds me that I am not that 14 year old, too smart, but not wise enough, innocent spirit I used to be. I am now going to share the adult secret. Likely the one that adults wish they could deny is truth. You are the same person you were at birth; you are the same human at 10 that you are at 20, 30 and so on. An honest mother can attest to this. My own children are still mirrors of what they were as babies. My oldest, who was the serious, brooding baby, is still the same person at age 16. My youngest son, the lovable teddy bear as a toddler, is yet again, the same at 12. When you are 14 and are suffering a loss, it hurts just as bad as it does at 20 and 30. Do not let the jaded natures of those older then you tell you that your loss isn’t as bad now as it would be had you known the person longer, loved them more, been in their life more or the worst yet, that you will grow out of it. Do not watch others and judge from their reactions how you should act, how you should feel. It was never more important in your life to be true to yourself then it is at this moment.
You will see others, who appear to not be as hurt or emotional as they should be. It might even make you angry, but you have to brush some of that off because maybe they were never told it was alright to grieve openly over a lost loved one. Perhaps they were raised to be that way whatever the issue. It is not for you to judge their behaviors no more then it is for them to judge yours.
In order for you to finally accept the death of a loved one, you have to accept what your true place in their life was. In order for me to accept the death of Alex, whom I loved so much, I had learned to appreciate the fact that I could have the ability to bury a best friend. I was so blessed for having even known Alex for a few passing moments much less for 13 years, that I had to just come to terms with the fact that others had not gotten the chance to know him as I had. It was for them I felt the most grief. I spent a lot of time feeling so unlucky. What was unlucky about me? I got to spend a lot of happy years loving my best friend and even though he was gone now, what would my life had been like without him? Indeed, I had been very lucky.
Believe me; I didn’t make it to that moment of clarity without a lot of ‘poor me’ moments. I’ll never forget the things that people said to me about the death of my friend. My own mother in a moment of thoughtlessness said “people die everyday.” It took me years to comprehend and forgive that statement. It was the wrong thing to say. Of course people die everyday, but not my people, not my best friend, not the first boy I kissed, not my little gossip mate, not the boy that I swore to take care of. My mother had dealt with her own personal losses in her own way. It wasn’t just the same way that I did. With Alex, I learned the hardest lesson yet. To count my blessings in those moments that I felt cursed.
How could Alex be taken from me? The blessing in that thought was that I was even able to say he was taken from me. Like a child who felt, ‘that’s MY friend you can not play with him!’ I came to the realization that even calling him my anything was proof of the gift I received. Millions of people didn’t get to know him. They never got to feel that silent comforting moment when it was just him and I against the world. They never had that genuine connection with this person whom I took for granted before his death, and never forgot what a gift I was given after he left this world for the other side.
There is a saying that I do believe in. “The dead do not suffer the living.” I wholeheartedly agree. It is not death that is harsh and merciless; it is living that hurts the most. The moment you can understand that statement, then you have learned to accept the loss you have suffered, and only then can you move forward from there, to the next fork in the path.
How to accept the loss of someone you love
I want to say that one day you will no longer suffer the loss of the person you are missing. But I don’t mince words, or offer false hope to anyone. There may always be moments when you find yourself saying aloud or to yourself that you wish that person was here to see this or that. Nothing that I write or that anyone talks you through is going to take away those moments of remembrance. Never should you begrudge yourself those moments. Relish those, because at those times you know that you have come to accept the loss. Accepting the loss doesn’t mean you approve of it. Accepting the loss doesn’t mean you have forgotten how important this person was in your life. Accepting the loss simply means that you fully realize they do no longer exist on the same plane as you.
It’s almost as if you had died. You can literally see your life flashing before your eyes. It is those times when you and your loved one shared a moment, a giggle or even a good cry. I know you want to get past these lonely moments. The first step to doing so is going to be one of the hardest battles you have fought so far. Acceptance isn’t the key; it’s the deadbolt lock keeping the door closed even if the key in the doorknob has already been turned.
Just as in grief, people find acceptance in different ways.
How did it happen? I know that a lot of people tend to feel this is a morbid issue. If you have ever lost someone you loved tragically it does not seem that way at all. We struggle with the fact that our hearts are breaking because we worry that they suffered. Was he alone? Did he feel pain? Did he say anything? Was he scared? These are all serious questions and simply having an answer to any of them will spell relief for you, even if just momentary. A word of warning, the answers are not always comforting. With acceptance we are not necessarily seeking comfort, but closure.
You will now have to use your own judgment as to whether the rumors you hear about the death of your loved one are true. Luckily, most people do not choose this particular hard time to make things up or embellish stories into horrors. Without causing others pain, it might be the time to seek out some of these answers. You have to accept one way or another that your loved one is gone. They had a life, from beginning to end. It is normal to want to know how it ended for them if you were not present when it occurred. Be as emotionally prepared as you can be before you begin to ask questions. Give yourself a bail out promise. Promise yourself that if hearing anything painful hurts worse then the loss itself, you will stop and weigh out whether it hurts more to know or not know. Do what is best for you. DON’T do something such as subject yourself to more intense misery because others feel you should. Don’t forget to tap a bit into foresight as well. Are you the type who would regret this later? Be prepared to be upset if you read news stories on the incident that took them from you. The media does not usually cover how great of a person your friend or loved one was, just the facts on the tragedy. Do not take that personally.
Right now it might seem impossible that you will ever accept that they are gone. You are still seeing them walk into the room at the same time they did everyday. You are still expecting to hear the phone ring at the same time they used to call. You may even believe you heard their voice or seen a glimpse of them, even when you know it is not possible. You are not going crazy. The human mind works in incredible ways, sometimes it gives you just what you want, a voice, a sound, a warm memory, and just as often it deprives you of those same things. Try to cherish the memories instead of hating or dreading them. Just a glimpse of any of my lost loved ones, even in a dream, gives me a quick lift of my own spirit. I’ve definitely learned to appreciate those.
Take the time to write a letter that explains how you felt about the person you lost. Include good memories, bad memories and how losing them makes you feel. Keep it to yourself forever if you choose. One day you may feel inclined to share it with someone who would want to know what it contains. I will show you how important this could be to you later on in this book.