Take a moment and imagine your life as a tapestry.
What you see depends upon which side you’re looking at.
Sometimes, you only see what looks like the back side of the fabric, with broken threads and uneven and missed stitches, the difficult painful events.
If you take a breath, give it time to unfold and hold onto faith/hope/love, you may be able to imagine the top side of the tapestry and begin to believe that your life will become upright and okay again, maybe even beautiful in its own unique, changed way. It won’t always feel upside down the way the loss of loved one can throw it.
Hold out your hands and consider this:
Your Past as your left hand — the fabric and events of your past.
Your Future as your right hand — the fabric of the unknown, yet to unfold.
Your Now — you and your body in this very moment. The fabric of what is right in front of your eyes.
But, how do you stitch your past to your present and future after you’ve experienced a painful loss? How do you hold onto your loved one and also move forward into your life as it unfolds?
It’s important to be able to hold your loss in one part of your life while simultaneously holding a present and future-looking part in another. There are some things that can help you to do this.
1. Create rituals. Some religions have rituals that help us to walk through our grief, remembering and honoring. (e.g. saying Kaddish, lighting yartzeit candles, visitng the gravesite). You can create your own rituals, including rituals like saying goodnight to your loved one at the end of the day, cooking their favorite recipe or sitting in their chair. We need rituals. They help us stay connected, heal and stitch our relationship and memories to now and the future.
2. Write letters or updates in a journal. This helps us to stay connected and continue to say what didn’t get said. Again, it stitches and continues our bond to our loved one.
3. Talk and share with others about your loved one. Every time you share, you create another small stitch in your fabric of grief and connect it to your present self. You share the joy of a memory and others learn more about your loved one, which also makes them a part of your Present life.
4. Join a grief group and become a part of a community that understands. You can stitch together that way. You help each other to find the skill, courage and strength to heal.
There is no “closure” to grief or to the relationship with your loved one. You learn to “stitch” that relationship and those memories into your Present and Future, like sewing three pieces of cloth of different colors, sizes, shapes and textures together to make something beautiful. Life is different now… but it’s still your life and your loved one will always be a part of your unique life fabric.
Keep stitching…