The People We Have Lost Accompany Us In Many Ways

Facing the death of a loved one is like sailing for a time in an ocean of huge lonely glaciers. Little by little we wake up, dawning again to life and the warmth of its rumor to perceive that they are there, that they accompany us in infinite ways while they sleep in the middle of our heart.

Daphne Du Maurier once said in one of her stories that death should be like farewell at a train station. It should allow us to have an interval of time to say goodbye, to merge in a long hug where we do not leave anything pending and thus wish the loved one a good trip.

However, we all know that in real life we ​​do not always have that platform or that time of idyllic goodbyes. Because fate is sometimes cruel and sharp, and it likes to tear from our side the most precious treasures : our loved ones. Hence, we face most of our losses with a mixture of anger, grief, and indefinable disbelief.

It is often said that after the death of someone very close, rather than living, “we survive”, and we limit ourselves to advancing against the current as if we were the protagonists of a strange life outcome. Now, this way of seeing the duel is not the best . We are obliged to rebuild our lives, to make our days a beautiful tribute to the one who still lives in our hearts, to that person who left us a beautiful legacy, who still accompanies us in many ways today.

Let’s reflect on it .

Those who are still with us do not deserve to lose us

Sometimes we do not hesitate to look up remembering those we have lost. However, they are not that far away, we are not separated by a whole sky or a thick wall that divides the universe of the living from those who are no longer there. They inhabit a precious corner of our emotional brain, fused in the palace of our souls and that half of our heart that drives each beat.

, despite the fact that others are no longer with us. Julian Barnes said in his book ” Levels of Loss ” that after the death of his wife he realized many things. The first is that the world is divided between those who have experienced the pain of the death of a loved one and those who have not.

He discovered this example through a friend, who tactfully commented to him that one advantage of having lost his own wife is that now he could do whatever he wanted. That made Barnes very bad, because he understood life as a place shared with his wife. In fact, .

The second lesson Julian Barnes learned about death is that life deserves to be lived despite that bleeding void, despite that void on the other side of the bed. Because saying “no” to keep moving forward is like losing the loved one again, that person who lives internalized in our being and who asks to be honored through happiness, memory and new smiles.

They will always be with us

There is no shortage of people who usually comment that “surviving means leaving our deceased beings behind day after day . ” Now, it is not really  about leaving behind, but about rebuilding our present to allow us a more comprehensive future where memories and new experiences form a whole.

“The sea dresses in velvet, and the deep sea looks like mourning”

-Ruben Dario-

There is a very interesting book on the subject called “Love never dies: How to Reconnect and Make Peace with the Deceased” (love never dies, how to reconnect and make peace with the deceased person). In it, Dr. Jamie Turndorf provides us with a very useful strategy not only to cope with grief, but also to realize the ways in which our loved ones accompany us every day, those whom we have had to let go by force. .

Connect emotionally with the memory to reduce pain day by day

The strategy Dr. Turndorf proposes is simple and cathartic. It is based on an adequate internal dialogue where we can close possible pending issues, where we heal wounds and stay with that emotional legacy that our loved one left us.

These would be some keys.

• Prevent your mind from going only to the last moments, let your memory be wise and selective and nourish each day with happy moments, smiles, moments of complicity. That joy from yesterday will motivate you in the present.

• Talk internally with that person, tell him that you miss him but that you accept, little by little, that he is far away because you understand that he is fine, that he is happy. Explain that there are days when things cost you more, but then you gain strength because you remember everything that he taught you, everything that he offered you to make you a great person.

To conclude, this inner dialogue can be of great help to us, it is like creating private corners where we can heal day by day, where we continue to move forward knowing that love, unlike the physical plane, never dies. We are facing an eternal emotion that gives us comfort and an everlasting light. Let it envelop us, let it offer us warmth as we smile again.

Images courtesy of Catrin Welz-Stein