Finding The Beauty in Loss
Last month, I lost my mom. A year ago, I lost my dad. In April, I lost my job of 23 years. Soon after, I buried my 10-year-old dog.
Losing so many things that you love, especially in the course of a year, feels unimaginable.
It’s easy to lose yourself to loss. Thankfully, with the help of my wife, my kids, my friends, family and therapists, I made it through. A new person, better than before.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
I got some great advice from friends. One thing that stood out, early on, was “Don’t just do something, stand there.” I am a sucker for beautifully simple and profound pieces of advice, and I committed it to memory, drawing upon that path multiple times a day. It taught me to be still. To not act. Live in that moment and search for something in it. More practically, don’t say or do something you will regret.
So I began a yearlong journey, along the way searching for meaning, and in some unexpected form, beauty. The learning was slow and deliberate, pulled from snippets of conversations with people along the way. In my old office, I had a sign. It said “Some things are learned best in calm, and some in storm.” Yet, another piece of advice that swept me off my feet years before. So I looked for the lesson, while I weathered the storm.
The first place I went was the anger. I needed to address it immediately, give it its moment, and then let it go. During an early lunch a friend told me that “Bitterness is a cancer that attacks the host.” My head was already in that direction, but unable to articulate it to the likes of Maya Angelou.
There were questions, even in anger, I would not allow myself to ask. “Why me?” was one of them. First, because there really was no answer, and second, if I convinced myself there was, I didn’t want to uncover that additional layer of pain, even if it was phantom.
I also wouldn’t allow myself to just feel better. We must get to know ourselves in times of pain, as we do in times of joy. Too often, we simply ignore the loss and embrace the gift. But that conditions us away from ever dealing with sorrow, which can be far worse than the pain itself.
But loss is not an unwanted telemarketer or a pushy perfume salesperson at a mall kiosk. Loss is not the kid selling candy bars outside Target when you don’t have cash, or the guy in a T-Mobile polo, asking about your cell plan. Pain and loss should not be avoided. They should be confronted. You should look pain in the eye, address it on the spot and try to find the meaning, or it will follow you forever.
But too often in society, we eschew our pain away. So we are never comfortable with feeling discomfort. But within my walls of loss, I discovered a beautiful silence. I could hear myself, without distraction. But I could not just hear myself. I could hear other versions of me inside. Not in a schizophrenic sort of way, but more of a layered approach. All of my former selves, the ones that are said to change every seven years, were now reintroduced to my 50-year-old self. And it was solace. And it was beauty to my ears and my soul.
Within this past year, I have learned more about me than in any other year of my existence. As the noise of life has quieted down, I have grown to celebrate, accept and understand life’s losses the same way I have welcomed life’s gifts. Because each day is filled with both. There is a direction life takes us, and sometimes that direction requires loss at the Y in the road. And we must go forward with courage, even if forward means pain.
I also uncovered the larger, cultural meaning around loss, and how we approach it as a society. Because loss, in itself, is neutral on the spectrum of happy and sad. Yet, it is looked on as negative only because we assign it that short-term value. But loss and gain can live in the same moment. Playing a game, pitching new business. Within that one act is a winner and a loser, and as you unpack that, you realize that maybe loss and victory are more closely related than we think. Just like love and hate.
When I lost my job, I felt like it was a gift wrapped in newspaper. I found it hard to see the value at first, but once I opened it up, I understood what I had been given. And for that, I am forever grateful. Inside that newspaper was another version or me. Hungrier, more curious. Set free from the encumbered pace of a salaried existence. And as my life has been filled with so many choices, now it was down to two.
Make it or don’t.
So, I connected with my old partner, and we started our own agency, we were now in control of everything. My therapist and others had suggested this, but I didn’t have the courage at first. I didn’t think I was the entrepreneurial type. Then, that person reappeared, in my actions and attitude. I liked him, and realized even though I lived a cushy agency existence, we were very similar. When I had a project that needed pushing, I did it. I circled the agency to get the job done, doing whatever was needed. Now, those two selves have reconciled, and work together in this new adventure.
The gifts of loss have been numerous. I rediscovered an old friend. I gave a new life to a 3-legged dog. I ditched my commute and have strength, resolve and balance. I am closer to my children, my wife, my world. The road was littered with pain and conflict, but the destination was worth the struggle. When I got the news of my job loss, I became a kid of 20. I saw the world as my playground. I knew many things awaited. I knew loss was a gift.
It was a beautiful reset as well, to know who were my friends. Which ones were brave enough to reach out to talk about something awkward, and compassionate enough to do something about it. It added a powerful dose of perspective and helped reprioritize life and relationships. With that lens, I began to see worlds I didn’t know existed. Days that were sharp with the understanding that life is for moments that matter. If one path is not working, be brave enough to choose another route.
The healing process pushed me to connect more with writing and my art. I even began selling it on the side of the road. I was terrified, and if I still had an office job, I would never have done it. But I pushed outside my comfort zone. I sat there in between my mom and dad’s memory, and laughed. In a few short months, I went from having a VP title at LA’s largest ad agency, to willfully peddling art on the side of the road, wearing an old flannel that smelled of patchouli, and documenting the days.
And, I had never been happier.
The loss of my parents were different than the loss of my job. If felt like there was no one inside me who could save me from that. When my dad died, a part of me went with him, so I made sure a part of him went with me. But I didn’t just grieve for him, I grieved for my mom, and her loss of a long and happy relationship that began at 16.
I also knew that the relationship with my dad had been internal for the last 25 years. Living cross country, I had seen him once a year, so most of him was already memories. They lived inside me, and I knew he/they would live forever. That helped me through things.
When my 11-year-old daughter returned from a school trip she looked forward to all year, she was visibly sad it was over. I told her that in life, we make memories to store them inside forever.
In that there is no death, no loss, no sadness over a school trip.
My mom’s passing was the same, but different. Those stored memories will live longer than her physical being. Loss for me did not come as it had for others in the family who were present everyday. I did not see the lines on her face, or smell her perfume. I did not walk by where she sat for coffee or read the paper. She was merely another person inside me. Remembered exactly as I wanted her to be.
That helped me understand the layers of loss. In all cases there is the abstract and the practical. The abstract is the realization that I do not have a parent, I do not have a job, I do not have a dog. The practical, which for me was incredibly harder, is dealing with estates, or wills, or funerals or Cobra. The devil is truly in the fucking details.
Yes, loss has tried to define me over the last year. But I haven’t let it. Instead, I confronted it and discovered the beautiful people that live inside me. I freed the different versions of me that were trapped inside, without a voice, and made room for my mom and dad, so that they could have a new life, forever inside my being.
And yet, as I therapeutically searched for the beauty in loss, I realized an equally beautiful irony. The real lesson was that I didn’t need to wait for loss to discover what was inside me. It was already there, and I just needed to be brave enough to stop resisting, and set it free.
Thanks Mom and Dad, for the lessons you taught me. Even from the other side.
