Living On in the World Left Behind
Chapter 6 Living the Continuation
Since she was gone, perhaps I had always been trying to “bring something to an end.”
I wanted my sorrow to end. I wanted my lingering attachment to end. I wanted to push the time of loss into the past. I feel I was struggling, thinking that way.
But over two years, I realized.
It doesn’t end. Sorrow isn’t something that disappears as time passes. Rather, changing its form, it quietly melts into the days we go on living.
Sometimes heavy, sometimes light, sometimes it becomes tears, sometimes a quiet breath.
In that way, her absence came to dwell in me.
It is pain, and at the same time, proof that she lived.
I met her. We loved each other, we built up time together, and I was by her side until the very end.
The fact that she died cannot be changed. But the meaning of that person having existed can be renewed again and again in the way I live.
Because she was here, I now think about what it means to “live” far more deeply than before.
Because she is gone, I have become able to listen more carefully than before to other people’s pain.
The “my future” she worried about until the very end, I am now trying to live properly.
Maybe, all along, she wanted me to live the “continuation.” Maybe she hoped that even after she was gone, my life would keep moving forward.
So I, even in a world without her, now mean to keep walking, properly.
Even though she is gone, her words, her smile, the way she looked at things, all remain within me.
I won’t pretend that time never happened. I will live carrying it all, the sorrow and the tenderness alike.
Not “living over again” the world without her, but “living it onward.”
That is my own answer to the days I spent with her.
Through this writing, you and I both come to know the truth that she was here, and walk on with that life. This is where this writing arrives.
When I went back to my family home, the chair she used to use was being used by my nieces and nephews, and by my mother. Seeing that, for some reason, I felt relieved.
The things she “left behind” are things we can go on using, with care, from here on.
References
- Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement Authors: Margaret Stroebe & Henk Schut About: A contemporary model that describes grieving as an oscillation between loss orientation and restoration orientation. Summary: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10848151/
- Disenfranchised Grief Author: Kenneth J. Doka About: The concept of isolated grief that follows losses society does not acknowledge (an unmarried partner, a same-sex partner, a former spouse, and so on). Summary: https://books.google.co.jp/books/about/Disenfranchised_Grief.html?id=evlGAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y
- Denial of Death Author: Ernest Becker About: The idea that culture and religion deny and cover over the fear of death. Winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize. Summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death
- Western Attitudes Toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present Author: Philippe Ariès About: A historical view that modern Western society turned death from a "tamed death" into a death to be avoided. Summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Attitudes_Toward_Death_from_the_Middle_Ages_to_the_Present
- Terror Management Theory Authors: Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski About: People gain psychological stability against the fear of death by strengthening their cultural worldview and self-esteem. Summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory
- Resilience to loss and chronic grief: A prospective study Author: George A. Bonanno About: A longitudinal study finding that most people follow a "resilient" pattern after a loss, without breaking down severely. Summary: https://sites.bu.edu/deborahcarr/files/2020/09/bonanno-et-al-2002.pdf