Love and Death
Death is like sex. It’s something everyone does, but you hardly ever see it, and no one talks much about it–not publicly any ways. Death, like sex, is raw. It demands that you give it its due. ~Colleen, “The Jim and Dan Stories.”
My poet friend, Mara, who I share a grief bond with and often play Scrabble with is in LOVE! When we played Scrabble last weekend, she was not only on the phone with her lover half a dozen times during our game, but she was playing Scrabble with her online…in-between turns.
Two-timer! I shouted across the table.
Three of us played that day, and when it wasn’t Mara’s turn, or she wasn’t on the phone, or playing online scrabble with her girlfriend, we talked about the paper she is writing for school, “Physical Symptoms of the Early Stages of Love and Grief: Exploring the Connections and Correlations.” Mara, who lost her husband a couple of weeks before my brother Jim died, can speak from experience on both.
Her paper begins: The initial reaction is disbelief. How could there be a connection between love and grief? One is positive, the other is negative – at least that is the common misperception. When some of the physical manifestations are examined, however it’s startling how similar the symptoms are. They mirror each other: mind, emotion, and most especially body. Loss of appetite. “Butterflies” in your stomach. Sleeplessness. The world becoming strange and surreal. Grief and love are different only so much as our perception changes them. They both change us inexplicably, often affecting our entire manner of viewing the world…
Besides the obvious similar physical symptoms of falling in love and losing someone you love, both are experienced with a wide open heart and both are tied up in longing. Does the body know the difference between tears shed for joy or for grief? And what about bittersweet tears that blur the lines of emotion, such as those brought about when in the presence of something painfully beautiful, feeling proud of your child when he leaves home, or being so deeply touched during lovemaking that you come undone.
Mara asks two good questions: Why do we continually strive towards love, not simply love of family, work, purity, but the eternally complicated conundrum of being “in love,” which tortures far often than it satisfies?
And…Why do we avoid grief with such a dogged passion? Why do we try to protect ourselves and those we love from the very realities of death? Often mourning provides similar heights of joy and clarity to the struggle and pain love can give.
Being with my brother Danny when he died was a gift, while at the same time it was a trauma. Even so, I look back on the last two weeks of his life that I spent with him in the hospital with such fondness. Every day I was excited to see him, knowing in the back of my mind that it might be the last time I could. With a heightened sense of awareness, I lost myself in caring for him. I saw only him and thought of only him, and when he was gone, I missed that one pointed focus. Maybe the experiences of love and grief are so related because with both you forget self, with both the illusion of separation falls away, and you are one with another human being.
Ultimately, what is grief, but an expression of love? The more love felt, the deeper the grief.
Post Note:: For the first time in 9 months, I’ve updated my Silver and Gold Website, a contact place for my books that is dedicated to my brothers, Jim and Dan. You can view it here. Photo is of Mara playing online scrabble while her Scrabble board players look on.
November 18th, 2005 10:25 am
How thought provoking. How true. I am currently getting acupuncture treatments. My acupuncturist is Chinese and she often talks about the diffences in our cultures. She has spoke about the different ways West and East view death. I think the East is healthier. Thanks for this post.
November 18th, 2005 11:23 am
I guess death is scary to us because it is the definitive end.
I envy those who believe in life after death or reincarnation.
My mum is looking forward to death as she believes she will be joined with God. Good luck to her, I say! 🙂
cq
here from Michele’s.
November 18th, 2005 11:44 am
Grief and Love.. two very strong and powerful emotions. I think your last statement best discribes the connection..
“The more love felt, the deeper the grief.”
November 18th, 2005 1:29 pm
Very thought provoking. I was 20 when I experienced my first deep loss. I was 25 when I experienced my next deep loss. Both of those were death. At 30 I experienced loss in the form of divorce, and I’m not sure whether that hurt more than the deaths of my beloved great-grandparents. Perhaps, because I am reminded of it daily, and now it all seems bad. At least I can remember the good things about my great-grandparents. And maybe if the pattern holds, I won’t have to experience any other major losses for another 5 years.
November 18th, 2005 10:06 pm
Reading your entry reminded me exactly how strong the similarities ar between grief and love. I suppose it’s that opening of the heart, just as you’ve expressed, that forces our emotions to run the entire gamut of the feelings spectrum in both these circumstances.
visiting from michele’s today.
November 18th, 2005 11:47 pm
Deeply profound, Coleen. Truly. Beautifully rendered, too. Thank You Sooooo Very Much!
I know in my innermost being all that you expressed. Like as I said…this is a deeply profound post.
November 18th, 2005 11:58 pm
Very beautiful. When I remember being in love with my husband, I remember the pain…love does hurt and is very similar to grief. Do you think the grief of losing a loved one to death is easier, harder, or the same? I’ve never figured it out completely. With both the bad memories tend to fade with time and you remember the good times; but with the divorce it has felt like a deep wound that just starts to scab over when something knocks it off again. It really takes a long time either way.
November 19th, 2005 12:14 am
srp, I don’t have the same experience as you with divorce….(although I have been divorced), but I’m sure that grief and loss aren’t only due to death. I realize that some people don’t feel the same level of grief I have felt over losing a sibling. There are so many varying factors and unique experiences of love and death. I can only speak for myself…but I think some themes are universal.
November 19th, 2005 9:37 am
It’s all of the heart so not surprising the emotions are intertwined.
Michelle sent me
November 19th, 2005 9:46 am
I like both the quality and topic of your writing. Mara writes of how suddenly everything is strange and surreal – this is how I remember all times of great loss. That odd grey quality in everything, shadows lagging after every movement, small echoes on every sound. Then slowly, slowly, life starts to come back in sync and then one day you realize you’ve survived.
I like the correlation of love to these times of great emotion – I’ll have to think more on that insight…
Thank you,
mw
Here from michele
November 19th, 2005 9:06 pm
Both involve relinquishment. Both involve a form of letting go. The sense of self must be suspended….