A Broken Heart Mending
If you are reading this, it is likely you too may have found yourself captured by loss. When enveloped by grief, a dark permanence alters our sense of ourselves and our place in life. Yet, having traveled through loss with many, it seems possible to loosen grief’s grip, allowing Life to beacon once again. Such was my experience this week. With the permission of my client, I share the following:
“I am better.”
Spoken by a man who never thought being better was possible. It has been two and a half years since his beloved partner of forty-five years fell tragically ill, and one year since her passing. Following his life-altering loss, this gentleman collapsed into the arms of pain. He could not muster up the energy and where-with-all to pay his bills, renew his license or step out of his home. He contacted me for guidance.
With courage and determination, he participated for three hundred sixty-five days, on a journey with me that allowed for full expression of sorrow and fears. He grappled with isolation and deep sadness. He allowed me to guide him, returning to remember and share about his many years’ history with his beloved wife; he shouldered his sorrow while recalling their meeting, dating, marriage, and a many decades long friendship. He unpacked his regrets and worry and the pain of her illness and life passing. He relived his experience of caregiving and attending throughout her lengthy decline. As the weeks and months passed, I watched a transformation: a gradual softening and acceptance for what had passed and what was present. As agency began to return, I watched this man begin to touch the world that awaited.
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Two weeks ago, he embarked on a trip to Europe that would reconnect him with former colleagues, many of whom he had mentored in years past. It had been a long time since he’d seen many of these people, and this trip was going to be a trial: he would be returning to valued people and special places after the long and life-altering hiatus of his late wife’s demise and passing.
In my mind, my client’s trip and his return to such cared-about people and places perhaps would soften his experience of tragedy. At the same time, I knew that this experience would also be uncharted territory with risks worth taking: would he find himself in a dark cloud of sadness and memory? Could he transverse the parallel roads of sorrow and connection? Dark or light, what might this experience conjure up for him?
He arrived in Italy and then in France, and the unfolding began.
He was attending a four-day conference-then on to deliver a seminar in a different city.
I began looking forward to his regular email updates from the trip. I learned that amidst dinners and visits, he was open to sharing about the impact of his experience of loss. He wrote to me about the unfolding value of being with long-time friends, how he was welcomed, and his delight at experiencing his own agency–while at the same time, he remained present to how deeply he missed sharing all with his beloved partner. Yet, he engaged, and he contributed every step of the way. I began to learn more about who he was in the world, a world where, as I was seeing, he contributed–and contributes–brilliance.
In his final week abroad, I received an update email containing a seemingly startling “ah-ha” and human treasure: “…I think I make a difference!”
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Indeed, he does, and wow. Having been through a storm of grief so intense by way of fatigue and isolation that it seemed to rob him of the shared human experience, his message represented a return to something sacred: his recognition that he can touch the life of another.
Connection and continuing has begun to refill his soul. A broken heart has begun to restore. Such an experience of loss is never linear nor “finished,” however many things can exist at once, and my client’s story, perhaps, offers one of the miracles inherent to the human spirit: the heart has this capacity to survive, to integrate, to bloom into a vessel ever more expansive and capable of holding the human experience.