Loss

LOSS

February 13th 2015

      A few months ago my son's girlfriend ended their relationship. My son was devastated. He came home from university for a long weekend to be close to his family at such a painful time. Together my wife and I helped him during those initial few days and in subsequent weeks to come to terms with his loss. It was his first real relationship and his first real heartbreak.

      I love my son dearly. It was hard to see him so distressed but we didn't smother him with attention and well meaning advice but instead allowed him room to find his own way with his feelings and his grief whilst at the same time being there in the wings to offer help and support whenever he felt he need it.

      It was not easy for him but he pulled through and found his own way forward.

      This occasion also acted like a catalyst for me opening up personal feelings of loss of which, for much of the time, I am unaware. I recall sitting with my counsellor relating my son's experience and its effect on me and feeling such a sense of sadness and loss focussed towards my son. Initially, I was confused by the intensity of these feelings. Yes, my son was very sad but, like all young love affairs, he would get over it in a reasonable amount of time and be richer for the experience. And then I realised what was happening to me - through my son's predicament I was tapping into my own inner child's sorrow and loss.

      Sitting with my counsellor, I sensed the loss of a normal, carefree childhood where I was free to explore and interpret life in my own terms; loss of that inherent right for the adolescent to have the right amount of space and time in which to mature into adulthood; loss of the intrinsic freedom to choose for myself and, more crucially, loss of the right to discover for myself who I am and my place in this world.

      The consequence of these kinds of losses has, for me, been confusion as to who I am, frustration in knowing my place in life and difficulties with relationships. I feel like a butterfly which has emerged from its chrysalis without its wings. Looking back there is a deep sense of lost time, of lost opportunities for love, for fun, for truly engaging with a beautiful world and for genuine relationships with others, particularly with my parents and my brother.

      Christian fundamentalism, with its overbearing sense of what is right and wrong; with its black and white view of life coupled with its obsessive fear of the world and it's insistence on having a monopoly on the truth has an enormous capacity to insidiously inflict these kinds of losses onto its innocents.

      Coming to terms with losses like these is never easy. Their pain remains and we have to come to some kind of acceptance of that fact. Owning our pain and allowing our wiser, adult self to comfort and reassure our inner child affords a way towards healing – and yet, conversely, because of the experiences creating the pain we can be richer human beings with a greater capacity for care and understanding.