Shadowloss

[Xenophon]

Jersey Girl I've been working much harder on my own self realization as well so you won't hear complaints from me even if you put down a book worth of thoughts. Absolutely no rush as in real life will always trump the musings we put here.

[Doctor Steuss]

I hope your next posting vacation isn’t quite as long.

[Some Schmo]

What a great topic. I suspect I've had several shadow losses that have gone untended.

My wife and my anniversary is in March. Our 25 year came in March of 2020, and we had this extravagant vacation planned in Las Vegas. Leading up to our vacation, the news was building about COVID, and my wife and I kept saying to each other, "We're going. I don't care about the virus; we're going."

It was about four days before our flight when we (and seemingly everyone else) realized, "This thing is serious. I don't think we're going." It was a good thing we didn't get on that flight, too, because the hotel we'd booked actually closed down midway through our reservation.

We'll never get our 25th wedding anniversary back. We sat out on our porch and had a few too many drinks, wondering what the hell the world would look like in a few weeks. It was a scary time, another post-9/11 kind of time, where we felt uncertain about everything. I can't say it was the best anniversary we ever had. Not even in the top 20.

I cope with this by thinking, "Well, 25 is just another number. Maybe we should just make our 27th anniversary the blowout year."

I actually feel like one of the lucky ones during the pandemic. I've been working remotely for years, so the "working from home" thing made no difference to me, except that all of my colleagues also work from home now, so I get to see a little piece of everyone's home on conference calls. My clients' businesses have been booming, so there's been no economic threat to my family. I guess I've been glossing over my shadow losses by focusing on how it could have been so much worse.

I think that's the problem the OP is alluding to: if we've survived or even thrived during the pandemic, it could be easy to ignore everything we've lost, or at least, feel like we don't have room to complain.

[Xenophon]

I hope your next posting vacation isn’t quite as long.

Thanks for those kind words. Who knows what the future holds. Barring another catastrophic shift I'm not planning on it. Hope you are doing will Steuss!

[Xenophon]

Appreciate your contribution Schmo. I'm glad to hear if nothing else work hasn't been too difficult for you during this time. I think you hit on one of the primary reason Cole's thoughts burrowed into my head and won't leave.

I guess I've been glossing over my shadow losses by focusing on how it could have been so much worse.

This idea that our blinders have masked the struggles that we are dealing with during a pseduo-extinction event. I suppose I should be grateful that our brains seem so well wired to keep us moving as opposed to spiraling out of control. That said I think if we don't try to acknowledge these losses they'll have long term negative impacts on our lives. At least for me I know unresolved issues from my mother's early passing years ago caught up to me later, I hope to avoid some of that this time around.

I'm sorry to hear about your 25th anniversary being disrupted, it may "just be a number" but it was a big deal to you and your wife and that is worth something. Given Cole's suggestion of a funerary rite of sorts I'd be curious what that might look like for y'all. My wife and I have been keeping a shared list where we make note of things we are missing or that were put on hold. We slowly have been working on either crossing some of those off, planning the biggest vacation of all time, or reconciling that we won't get some of them back but how we can compensate going forward.

[Some Schmo]

This idea that our blinders have masked the struggles that we are dealing with during a pseduo-extinction event. I suppose I should be grateful that our brains seem so well wired to keep us moving as opposed to spiraling out of control. That said I think if we don't try to acknowledge these losses they'll have long term negative impacts on our lives.

That's why I liked your OP so much. It really is important to acknowledge our losses and deal with them rather than sweeping them under the rug. That can be difficult when you hear other people's stories which are so much worse.

At least for me I know unresolved issues from my mother's early passing years ago caught up to me later, I hope to avoid some of that this time around.

I'm really sorry to hear that, partly because I can relate. I lost my mother when I was young. The first time I really cried over her passing was about 12 years after the fact. And let me tell you, the floodgates opened. I was sobbing uncontrollably.

I'm sorry to hear about your 25th anniversary being disrupted, it may "just be a number" but it was a big deal to you and your wife and that is worth something. Given Cole's suggestion of a funerary rite of sorts I'd be curious what that might look like for y'all. My wife and I have been keeping a shared list where we make note of things we are missing or that were put on hold. We slowly have been working on either crossing some of those off, planning the biggest vacation of all time, or reconciling that we won't get some of them back but how we can compensate going forward.

The list is a good idea. I'll need to talk to my wife about it. I suspect (knowing us) a shadowloss funeral will involve fire and alcohol.

[Xenophon]

I'm really sorry to hear that, partly because I can relate. I lost my mother when I was young. The first time I really cried over her passing was about 12 years after the fact. And let me tell you, the floodgates opened. I was sobbing uncontrollably.

I can appreciate how tough that is and fully relate to not letting that out until you can't keep it in any longer. I'm sorry to hear you went through that as well.

The list is a good idea. I'll need to talk to my wife about it. I suspect (knowing us) a shadowloss funeral will involve fire and alcohol.

Obviously feel no obligation but I'd love to hear what she has to say after sharing or some ideas y'all have for your "what" questions. I can all use all the extra brainstorming power I can get.

[Xenophon]

What a difference a year can make.

I've been stewing a bit more on Loss and the grieving process here lately. My father has not been well and I've been missing my mother especially during these trying times and in dealing with his ornery butt. Selfish? Sure, but fair too I think. Fortunately for me I've added quite a few tools to the ol' tool box to help deal with these challenges. Doubly fortunate is a very timely Ologies episode featuring the thoughts of the American Thanatologist Cole Imperi. You'll find the audio and transcript here ---> https://www.alieward.com/ologies/thano2022 The episode is an hour long but the actual bit with Cole is only 30ish minutes. What follows is a segment by Allie filled with things she has done/is doing in her grief process, some real world applications being tested.

The interview portion was recorded shortly after Allie's own father passed following a long battle with cancer and a Hospice stint that started back in May. I found her engagement with the topic especially touching as it was so deeply personal and the wounds are obviously very fresh. I can't imagine making it through this interview as well as she did given the circumstances and that alone merits a shout-out.

I don't have too terribly much to add but several folks seemed to enjoy her words last time I shared them so I thought I'd give this a little bump for any that might need.

Probably my 2 favorite bits from the interview:

After a loss, a flourish always follows a falter. And so many times, when we lose someone, or when you experience a shadow loss, which is the death of something not someone, we falter in life; you miss deadlines, you have to cancel stuff, you’re not able to nurture friendships, you just feel very ripped out of your own life and like you don’t even have a say. And so, we falter. It’s normal to feel really worried about, “How am I going to get back into my life? Stuff is gone, I’ve missed opportunities.” But a flourish always follows a falter, it just takes time.

This is like my favorite advice too, to keep your grief moving. Every day it’ll need something different. Some days you need to take it for a walk, some days you need to take it for a nice bath, some days you need to take it out to the hillside to cry and look at the sunset, sometimes you need to take it out for dinner with friends. And a good way that the grieving brain, I think can understand – this is not scientific, this is just me – is to ask yourself, what does my grief need today? What can I do with my grief today? Because you want to keep it moving. I think a good example is like, if you... Do you compost stuff or save food scraps? Yeah! So, if you leave stuff in there and it doesn’t get moved, it will rot and it will not be good. And that’s a lot like grief, you’ve got to keep it moving, you’ve got to give it air, you’ve got to give it sunlight, you’ve got to take it for some walks and keep it cooking. Otherwise, it won’t transform so that you can flourish again in the future.