Death is horrible. Based on what I've seen, it's usually horrible for the people who go through it. It's horrible for those left behind. It's just ... horrible.
I'm wondering, though, if losing a person through mental illness or substance abuse or a complete change in their personalities and values is even worse. I'm thinking that, in my opinion, it might well be.
Although several people close to me have passed away, the most difficult loss was unquestionably my stepfather. Even when I acted like an idiot and hurt him and my mother repeatedly, made mistakes that forced them to face things no parents should ever have to, he never gave up on me. He was always there, for me, for my family, and for thousands of other people (he was in a service industry--helping people was his life's work).
He died of lung cancer almost five years ago, and I still think about him every day. I try to live my life under the tenets that he lived his, and I take great pride in knowing that I help children every day.
While he is in my daily thoughts, though, he is no longer here. There will always be a hole in the hearts of those of us who loved him, but time passes and the hole grows a little smaller. It's an eternal pain in the heart that swells up and bleeds anew on Father's Day and Christmas and his birthday and the day he died and sometimes out of the clear blue, but it has shrunk because we have all had to figure out a way to live a life without him in it. It's incredibly difficult and it doesn't make the missing any less, but he came to this earth and shared his love and magic and then left for what's hopefully a better place.
When somebody becomes a different person and it happens in increments so small you are almost completely unaware, it's completely different. You can't help but think that the person who laughed for hours with you over a sign advertising for a wife in a way-up-north New Hampshire town and who was steadfast during nineteen and a half hours of labor and who knocked over a Diet Coke display in a foreign country and who convinced you that you were okay just the way you are ... he must be somewhere in that pathetic, hollow shell. All the caring and kindness he possessed, the desire to do good ... where could it possibly have gone? Can a person vomit out their positive qualities?
I truly believe that it's the worst to know that a person I was once madly in love with became so altered that he is no longer identifiable ... and that I can't even grieve for him. After all, he still walks the earth. It feels like the same sort of grief as death, though.
I suppose in a way it is a death ... the death of a person who once existed. And I can (and should) grieve for him, for I loved him beyond words even as I'm sickened by the puppet that walks around with his face and hands and feet.
Am I wrong on this? Is death worse than a loss like this in your opinion?
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Well it is definitely like a death, my divorce I felt in a word "broken" from the entire thing and yes it felt worse because he was still around, he was still visible etc and so forth and I often wondered what happened to the nice man I married.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I don't know that there is a comparison however, whatever affects you in a certain way is the way it is, nobody else has to agree you know what I mean? People thought I should be over my marriage within a couple months, everyone has their own timetable on dealing with the grief.
I think a death of a child though has to really top the list.
I think that you are absolutely right. I believe it in my own heart, anyway. My father is a funeral director. I've grown up with death. Death is natural if hard to bear sometimes. But I've seen all manner of death, and I can readily say, that the people I miss the most, aren't dead at all. They're walking the earth in a state far worse than death. I don't think you grieve for the dead, so much as for yourself in dealing with their loss. But the people you loose to circumstances, they represent wounds that never heal fully because the splinters that caused them are still inside, festering with all the things that might have been.
ReplyDeleteLooking at someone you've known for years, loved endlessly, dreamed about knowing the rest of your life, and being forced to face the truth that they are no longer the person that lives in your mind is, to me, the most difficult thing you will ever do. I have done it, with friends that changed my life, friends that I thought I would grow old with. I came to understand, that they were no longer the people that they had been. They grew away from me, and recognizing that was harder than loosing them, and the worst came from seeing how the change within them was for the worse, a weakening, a crack that will (and has) spread. I could not save them from that. It wasn't my choice. But I live every day wishing that it had been, mourning their loss.
*hugs*
ReplyDeleteI think loss is much worse than death in many ways.
In Clockwise, John Cleese's character says "It's not the despair I can't stand - it's the hope".
ReplyDeleteWhilst someone is still alive, there is always the hope that they will change back: a cure for Alzheimer's, a change of heart, a rediscovery of the person we fell in love with. When they are dead, then we accept that loss, however much it hurts.
Whilst they still breathe, it's much harder to accept that loss and in some cases, as with divorce, bitterness over what has been taken away can come to the fore.
I understand.
I think that in both you are losing someone, and so both bring about the same kinds of pain. But a death will happen decisively and a loss like that will be gradual, and sneak up on you. It will leave you doubting for a long while and won't give you a chance to grieve and heal, just because there is always some hope. So maybe it is both better and worse.
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ReplyDeleteIt is a loss, and the way hearts work, losses must be grieved, even if they are losses made even worse by still being present. I also want to tell you, from personal experience, that all the qualities of the person you loved are not gone, they're just submerged in the disease. They may come back, definitely not exactly the same, but they may come back. Until then, and even if that never happens, take care of yourself and heal.
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