Loss, Life and the Ties that Bind

This week, my family suffered a tragic loss. My brother-in-law, only 29 years old, unexpectedly died.  Once whole, we are a family minus one. A family that lost a limb but can always feel it, like it is still a part of our body.

Grief affects us on many levels.  I feel the loss as a sister; I feel the pain as a wife watching her husband grapple with no longer having his brother; and I struggle as a mother to watch my in-laws deal with the worst type of loss, the loss of your child. There are truly no words to put to it. 

It's as if our family has been saddled with a collective heaviness, taking us down like a stone into black water, no bottom in sight. 

This very personal loss was made all the more painful because we learned of his death on the eve of September 11...a day already part of our national consciousness that binds us together by a shared suffering. Even 11 years later, we watch old footage of that day and remember where we were, who we were with and what we were doing down to the most insignificant details.  It marks a dividing line in life.  Life before September 11 and life after it.  Now, I will remember life before September 10 and life after it.

If September 11 taught me anything, it taught me the connectedness of humanity.  When we strip away every negative thing we can do to or feel toward one another, we are all connected by love.  What other explanation could there be for the rescue work, the volunteers and the outpouring of human decency that outshone the terrible acts that befell us?  Watching neighborhood streets lined with American flags filled me with the promise that we are united. Yes, united in grief, but united in the bigger hope that grief lessens because love gets larger. And I believe that for my family. We are united in grief, but our love is larger.

September 11 also taught me to not take the people I love for granted, as much as that is possible.  As humans, we are not capable of treating everyone everyday like it is the last chance we may have to be with them.  But, this week, I was reminded again that we never know the hour or the place or the circumstances.

This week has been bleak. It has been grim.  It has been dark from all sides.  Two days that mean nothing but loss and ache.  But, because we are human, we know in the deepest part of ourselves that life is for the living, so we go on.

The saying "the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts" is true of family.  We are all made better by the family members that surround us, even the ones no longer with us.  They are the ones that pull us up from the black waters, fixing our eyes on the horizon that lies ahead and calling us forth, into life.