A DEFINITE QUESTION,
INDEFINITELY ANSWERED
March 2, 2008
By Mary Koch

                A friend commented: “I’ve been reading what you’ve written since John died, and I’m surprised that you feel his death so deeply. I mean, all those years since his stroke, surely you . . . “

            His question trailed off. He was not being insensitive. It’s his nature to ask direct, honest questions, and I’ve always appreciated his questions. They make me think. Spur of the moment, I gave him the best answer I could: “Loss is loss.”

            Whatever that means.

            When you marry someone who is 12-and-a-half years older, it occurs to you sooner or later that someday you may be alone. But not this day. And when your spouse survives a catastrophic stroke, or heart attack, or cancer, you realize that one day you could lose him or her. But not today.

            I was prepared for John’s death, but never really ready.

            A reader wrote to me several years ago. Her husband had a stroke that caused significant brain injury. It changed his personality, which is not uncommon.

            “I never thought I’d have to grieve for my husband twice,” she wrote, anticipating what lay ahead. A few years later, after he died, she wrote again. Indeed, she’d been dealt a double dose of grief.

            I grieved mightily after John’s stroke, but it didn’t earn me a free pass when he died. I was immersed in a new kind of grief, a tsunami of feelings I hadn’t experienced the first time around.

            Grief is hard-wired into us. It is inevitable, because our lives are interwoven with stunning complexity. When we grieve, it is not only because we’ve lost the other person; we’ve lost a part of ourselves.

            Sue Miller’s novel, “Lost in the Forest,” begins with events surrounding the accidental death of a man named John. The reader never meets him – he’s dead, after all – but the fictional John comes “alive” as the living characters remember their relationships with him. Each relationship is unique. When they’re combined the reader has a full picture of the man.

            The book reminded me of wakes or memorial services, when you learn things about the deceased that you hadn’t known. Your grief is aggravated. You realize that you missed out on a significant part of that person, and there won’t be another chance in this lifetime to experience it.

            When we don’t grieve, or pretend we’re not grieving, we inflict serious damage upon our very being. We deny or diminish the love in our lives.

            Journalist Steve McKee in his book, “My Father’s Heart,” recounts how he lost his father to a heart attack at age 16. After a week’s absence he returned to school and was called into the coach’s office.

            How’re you doing, the coach asked. I’m OK, the boy replied. The coach was having none of that.

            “Your father just died and you’ll never get over it,” the coach bluntly advised. Then he got to the heart and hope of the matter:

            “But you will get used to it.”  

© Mary Koch, Omak, Washington 2008

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