The Puzzle of Loss and Gain

How is it that devastating loss can be freeing?

Fran Brown, my Reiki Master/Mentor of 25 years passed away last year, and a cloak of responsibility to carry on the traditional teachings of the Usui System of Natural Healing dropped across all her students. For me, I also felt freer to express who I really was to the world and stand as a Master with my own gifts.

And when my step-daughter, Linda, died in June, 2009, the turmoil of our 31 year relationship uncoiled. I no longer had to fear the mine-field of our communications or her visits. I did suffer the loss of the only one of our four children who remembered with enthusiasm every holiday of the year, and my birthday.

Since my sister/friend of 30 years moved away, my routine of regular check-ins over coffee have had to be replaced by occasional hour-long phone conversations where her wise comments whisper in my ear instead of from her distinctive face. I miss our routine connections but am finding other individuals popping in irregularly to offer feedback and observations. There are also more spaces in my life where I am on my own to figure myself out without her mirrored vision of me. I’m having to see myself from the inside.

And so it goes with every loss I’ve experienced in 2009: a dance between loss and gain with doors closing and doors opening.

Did all that happen to give me some kind of teaching so as to get me through the loss of my husband this year? As I stumble through my days without him, I feel the weight of the responsibility to keep our hearth and home intact as well as the freedom to do it my way at my own pace. I’m learning what fits for me and what doesn’t.

As I’m facing the loss of the opportunity to celebrate each day with my best friend, I am freed from having to pay attention to someone else’s likes and dislikes, his chosen routine, and the passing flavor of his attitudes and forceful opinions.

I no longer have my sounding board against which to bounce ideas or refine plans. Nor do I have the comfort of companionship and sharing. What I do have are whisperings in my ear, suggestions and reminders I can choose to follow or not. I am comforted by their quiet presence. Sometimes they cheer me on to a new level of confidence, and I find myself having a new experience.

I’m startled frequently by glimpses into a future so different from my past in which I blossom as my own unique flower rather then entwined as a bud around another.