Losing: When Not All is Lost

When I was four I was given a ‘Scooter’ doll; a character from the Muppets. He wasn’t my favourite personality on The Muppet Show; that honour went to Miss Piggy. I received Scooter for Christmas and even though I was really little I remember wondering, “Why does Santa think I want Scooter?

Well, Santa knew something I didn’t. Almost immediately, Scooter became the doll who I loved with my whole heart. I took him everywhere and snuggled with him every night. He made me laugh. I loved his pliable body and heavy rubber shoes that kept his legs crossed. I loved his fuzzy face with velcro hands that made him seem so expressive and alive. I also appreciated the velcro feature because his eyes were painted onto his glasses and the hands could be used to cover up the view of the blank space where his real eyes might have been.

The summer that followed the Scooter Christmas, I went on a boating trip with my family and Scooter fell overboard. There is no easy way to remember it, he drowned. His shoes that had made me laugh so often (like when I’d hang his ankles over his shoulders) made him go down like a stone. I was devastated. I remember the orange and green hue of his head and shirt fading away into the depths of the water. Rescue efforts were futile. It happened so fast. (He also had no peripheral vision so wouldn’t have seen it coming.) Hoping to console me, my parents bought me a replica which I was convinced looked nothing at all like my Scooter. The replica lived on my toy shelf and not in my heart.

Is the over quoted wisdom of Alfred Lord Tennyson true; “’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?

I believe it is true.

What love have you lost? A spouse, lover, best friend, an opportunity, loss of years passed or a future that will never be, a child, health, a parent, a dream?

Loss can be difficult. When the bloom in your heart is replaced with the heaviness of grief, how can presence possibly be a comfort?

What if comfort isn’t the point? Intentional presence or mindfulness might simply be necessary to heal.

Placing your hurt on the shelf and closing your heart to love can look different for many of us and at different times through the healing process. Do you start new projects or create a schedule to keep your mind and body busy? Do you attempt to replace what was lost with something new? Do you shut down and numb out? Do you faithfully contribute to the theatre in your mind about the past?

What if instead of perpetually pushing away the pain of loss, you moved toward the discomfort instead? What if, some of the time, you moved into the empty void left by the shrivelled bloom with your deliberate and unwavering attention?

Try to let yourself feel into something you have lost, right now. Or carve out quiet time for this intentional purpose. Watch your ‘story’ about the loss emerge but instead of engaging with it, keep coming back to the sensations your loss brings to your body. Feel it. Be with it. Return to it at the same time each day or any time you feel capable. Be relentless and also be kind. What does it have to teach you as it rises and falls away and rises again and falls away again? What did your love teach you?

Maybe, once you have given loss the space to ‘be’, there will come a time that you will recognize how the experience of love and loss has shaped you and how both have left seeds in your heart for flowers.