Loss as Practice

Two weeks ago I inadvertently found myself at a funeral service for a 36 year-old woman that I did not know.

Let me explain.

It was a  Sunday afternoon, and my family and I were spending time together at the local park so that my 9 year-old son could use his new scooter in the skate park.

We had been there just a short time, and  while my son was riding his scooter, my 4 year-old daughter began to play with another little girl on the playground while both I and the girl’s father looked on.

The girl was wearing a yellow-gold colored dress, and her blond hair was falling across her face as she laughed and chased my daughter in that a timeless child’s game: tag.

It all seemed like a very typical day at the park.

That is until we learned that the 5 year-old girl in the yellow-gold dress was about to attend her own mother’s funeral.

It turned out, the girl and her father had lost the child’s 36 year-old mother just one week ago, and the family and friends had made the decision to hold her funeral, or memorial service, in our local park.

Upon learning this, the moment quickly went from completely typical, to totally surreal.

To know that I was witnessing-- in that very moment--what would be one of the single most tragic days in that young child’s entire life was so bizarre, so uncomfortable, and deeply, deeply sad.

As someone with an admitted loss-sensitivity, created from an early start in life with a series of both quite ordinary losses and then a series of more trying losses that left me with more than a handful of scars leftover, one might think my vast and varied loss-experience might have left me to be very skillful with this utterly human-brand of pain and suffering.

But no.

Unfortunately, loss has instead turned out to be my Achilles Heel.

If you remember from your 8^th grade Greek Mythology, Achilles was a hero in the Trojan War, but who later died from an arrow that pierced the heel of his foot; the only single area of his body that was vulnerable because it had not been dipped in the river Styx by his mother when he was an infant, and up until now, I have always felt that loss was my Achilles Heel.

However, more recently, I have tried to take some steps to reframe suffering, in the form of loss, as practice instead of a vulnerability.

I know this idea is not rocket science.

And I know that if you have any interest at all in dharma practice, this is by no means new or novel- try thousands of years old.

And yet, for me, particularly with the experience of loss, framing this type of suffering (loss) as a practice instead of a vulnerability is still extremely difficult.

Which is why I look to the masters…

In Meditations of the Heart (1953) African American theologian Howard Thurman tells the story of British statesman Lloyd George in a short essay called “The Pressure of Crisis.” 

In the story Mr. Thurman simply and eloquently reminds the reader that in our lifetimes, it is the “storm” that will bear the most fruit in terms of growth and wisdom, not the metaphorical “sunny day.” It is the “storm” that will strip away what 

He writes: 

The experience of Lloyd George is common to us all. When all is well with our world, there is often no necessity to separate the ‘dead’ from the ‘not dead’ in our lives.

So according to Mr. Thurman, the practice or the value of the storm (the suffering) in some cases, is the wisdom that we gain about what goodness was already firmly embedded in our lives.

It is good to know what there is in us that is strong and solidly rooted. It is good to have the assurance that can only come from having ridden the storm and remained intact. Far beside the point is the why of the storm. Beside the point, too, may be the interpretation of the storm that makes of it an active agent of redemption. 

Given the storm, it is wisdom to know that when it comes, the things that are firmly held by the vitality of life are apt to remain, chastened but confirmed; while the things that are dead, sterile or lifeless are apt to be torn away.

Similarly, archetypally, one might think about the Hindu Goddess Kali as a way to open oneself to suffering as practice. 

In the book The Moonlit Path: Reflections on the Dark Feminine (2003), Jungian analyst and psychiatrist Ashok Bedi writes in the essay “Kali-The Dark Goddess:”

Kali is the fierce, dark Hindu goddess who amputates the darkness of our soul and makes room for the light. 

Whenever our life is out of balance, our darker, or shadow, aspects get into the driver’s seat. The archetype of the dark goddess Kali incarnates in our life drama to destroy the darkness of personality and make room for new consciousness to emerge.

New consciousness to emerge…I love that possibility to come from suffering..

And it seems to me that the Palliative Care Movement in the United States and around the world has really done an incredible job bringing awareness of that very real possibility with the work of folks like Roshi Joan Halifax and The Zen Hospice Project.

I have recently begun to read, but have not yet finished, two books on this topic: 

1.)    Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life (2000) by Philip Simmons, and

2.)    Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Couple’s Journey Through Alzheimers (2008) by Olivia Hoblitzelle.

Both books, it seems to me, written by individuals who found hard-won mastery in the bowels of suffering and loss as practice.

With more to come I’m sure as I keep reading…

In the meantime though, I will continue to try to open my mind, my heart and my body to the possibility that suffering is practice, and perhaps for me personally, loss may be the main event.

May it be so.