About twenty years ago, it occurred to me that life can be experienced as an endless string of losses. Although. I am not a person who can let go gracefully whether it is relationships, resentment, or clutter, I have managed to avoid falling into that particular mental sinkhole. Over the years I have negotiated the terrain of loss more than a few times. Writing has helped me heal from death and disillusionment, and sometime in the last several years, I realized that I had accumulated a body of work about living through losses. That is how Geography of Loss came to be.
The first major loss came when I was in my thirties, in graduate school. My father’s emphysema finally took him down in February of 1983. As an only child, I had always dreaded losing a parent. As my father’s final days unfolded, over a period of about five days, I stepped up in ways that I never thought I could. My mom had always avoided seeing sick friends, going to funerals or viewings, and her way of dealing with my dad during his final hospitalization was to stay home as much as she could. If it were up to her, she would have spent maybe an hour a day at the hospital with him.
When it because clear to me that my father wasn’t coming home this time, I took charge and told my mom that she would take days and I would take nights and we would NOT be leaving my dad alone in the hospital. And that is what we did. Even though it was only three or four nights that I spent in the hospital room with my dad, that time felt immense and it changed me.
During this time, I had to endure a lecture from the respiratory therapist the day before he died, about what he would do “if it was his dad”, and I was the one who signed the paper to take out the breathing tube after my father suffered several days of absolute misery and tried to remove it himself. I surprised myself. I was shocked to learn that the world did not crumble and I did not die when my dad did. I realized then that I had strengths I had never noticed or claimed. I also learned that when a person crosses over, it is a holy doorway, and that bearing witness, walking our beloveds to the edge is some of the most important work we ever do.
About two and a half years before my mom died, she moved from the land she’d lived on for almost fifty years. For me, letting go of the land that sustained me all my life was every bit as hard as losing my father. There have also been the death of beloved pets and for me, losing the furry family members is as hard as losing human relatives. I have come to appreciate loss as one of my greatest teachers.
Since then, I have lost aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and my mother. My mother’s departure occurred over five months, during which I took leave from my job and went down to her retirement community to care for her. She spent most of that time stuck between worlds, and this loss was a lesson in patience and endurance, more so than my experience with losing my dad. Again, it deepened and changed me.
I hope my poems about surviving loss and difficult times reflect what I have come to know over the years. I hope that my readers will be able to reflect on their own lives and appreciate the gifts and strengths that surface in their lives as they make their way through the rugged topography of loss.