Personal Losses

What do you say to someone who has suffered a personal loss? “I’m sorry” doesn’t quite cut it, neither does “They’re in a better place now”, and nor does “Just hang in there”. These are the ones I’ve heard being uttered the most, and the ones that seem the most useless. For one can’t just hang in there, hoping that their loved one is happier now, or that they are in a better place. How does anyone know whether the place they are in now is any better than the one they left behind? Isn’t that better place supposed to be here, on earth, with those who love them, and those they love? How does one find comfort in that thought?

I think the hardest part about events like these is the fact that you know that the memories you have are IT. There will be no more, and if there were things you should have said and done when they were around, well, that’s now your albatross. You have to live with the knowledge that they will never know. Suddenly every little thing seems to turn on the tap- the smell of their clothes, the queer loops of their handwriting, their favourite jam, the chocolates you bought them that are still lying in their refrigerator, the pictures you discover in their cupboard…. Every little thing is brought into sharper focus, and the stab of pain fresh every time. It’s like zooming into a photograph, and registering fully for the first time the details, the colours and the textures. Sometimes there are too many to comprehend, and sometimes, too many to bear.

Some say that losses like these make the people left behind stronger, more mature, and accepting of the ways of nature. That it teaches one about unconditional love. But it can also work another way. It can make them distrusting and bitter individuals. It can make one wonder why we bother with personal relationships- after all, they all end someday, and in the most painful way. No relationship end is pretty; some are relatively better while some are worse. It can make one wonder about love, and whether the pain at the end is worth the beauty of the emotion. Whether the seemingly non-ending tears are worth all the smiles and laughter in the past. Would it have been better to have foregone the smiles in order to have escaped the pain?

However, like a lot of people say, they are never truly gone. These loved ones go on living, if we take them with us, in our hearts. Modern technology and the power of the human mind makes it possible for us to still see them in photographs, hear their voices in recordings, smell them in their clothes and sheets, even talk to them, and know what they are saying if we listen hard enough…..

But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.