Loss...

I was with a friend the other day and we spent some time together and when leaving the place we’d been, he noticed something was missing from one of the bags he’d brought.

It was the only item in the bag and we knew it hadn’t been stolen as closer inspection of his bag revealed a hole where the item he’d now lost had likely slipped out.

We re-traced the journey back to his car and there, on the grass verge right by his car was the item. It had slipped out pretty much as soon as he’d exited his vehicle.

Why am I sharing this story?

I witnessed a myriad of different emotions in my friend all competing and vying for attention…every few seconds. There was shock, disbelief, annoyance, confusion, sadness and when we found it there was huge relief and perhaps one could say, delight judging by his smile.

As a grief therapist I often meet with and support people who have experienced great loss/es and the emotions I witnessed in my friend are the same that emerge during our session/s. It made me think that whilst some losses are clearly more distressing than others – loss is loss and will provoke and cause a variety of feelings to emerge. Sometimes these will take us by surprise, sometimes come out of the blue and often there won’t be a happy smile at the end with regards to being reunited.

I’m aware that we can distract ourselves from loss by not thinking about it or by using distractions of some kind. My friend was trying to keep it the loss at bay by considering options of where it might be (maybe I didn’t bring it, maybe I didn’t put it in my bag, maybe a left it somewhere else).

My experience is that as much as we may distract or hide from loss, eventually (at some point and in some way) it does hit you, as we can only hide or keep it at bay for so long. There’s a popular image of the person holding a beach ball [representing loss] under water – eventually it will come up… with force!

Feelings or emotions are there to alert us, pay attention, listen and respond compassionately and you can’t go wrong.