As above, so below
Being an “old-timer” at my online grief support group (I’ve been there a little over a year), I have had time to observe not only my own interaction with the group, but that of others, and the evolution of grief in all of us. Every time I check in there, it seems the number of members has ticked up a couple more, and that always makes me sad. Intellectually, I know that the longer we all live, the more of us will be touched by death, and that the number is always going to go up. But despite the fact that I accept that reality, I’m still sorry when new people join our not-terribly-merry band. I wish they didn’t have to. I wish I wasn’t there to greet them.
The image that crosses my mind every time a new member joins and announces their presence and the rest of us move towards them to welcome them, is that of a M*A*S*H unit. Everyone at the unit (which exists at a remove, but still plenty close to, the bloodshed) is tired, worn out, and also hurting to greater and lesser degrees. They are weary of reality, and yet it keeps coming through the front door, so they pull it together one more day and the walking wounded mobilize to help those who have just been blown to bits, who don’t know where their hearts or heads are. All they know is that they’re bleeding, and it hurts unlike anything they have ever experienced or imagined before.
I have done a lot of reading since A died to try to make sense of it all, and I cannot claim that I have done, but the reading has comforted me. Books have been there for me, close at hand, when others could or would not be. In addition to regular grief books of the how-to-get-through-it sort, I’ve read about people’s experiences with mediums, and their near-death experiences. I’ve even pumped two of my friends, who have both died and been brought back, for what they know. And a common thread through all this research is that when we die, we are not alone—that there are many there to welcome us, and there is an overwhelming feeling of love, and of home. My friend tells me that she felt surrounded by love—from those who had gone before her and were there to greet her, and she could feel the love from her husband and daughter who were still here in this world. And she felt no pain until the shock dragged her back into her body. In telling me that, she gave me some of the first moments of ease I had early in this journey.
Those of us who lose our loved ones die, too. We really do, for a time, and we, too, cross a threshold that separates us from those who do not have what my friend J calls “the knowledge.” And when we cross over, we are greeted by all those who have traveled this journey before us. Those who have lost a loved one, it seems to me, find in themselves a feeling of compassionate responsibility to reach out to those who follow them, because they know that so many turn away, and that grieving is the loneliest road. They don’t want others to suffer that isolation as they did, if they can help it.
It seems to me a mirror image, albeit in a much darker glass, of what may happen for our loved ones as they cross over to whatever comes next. They, too, are possessed of knowledge that cannot be told; it can only be experienced, and shared among those who know. But perhaps in this mirrored image, as I imagine it, we can find hope. There is a saying, “As above, so below.” And if it is our task to cross over to join those who know loss intimately, and continue our lives, then perhaps our loved ones are continuing their lives as well.
As I wrote that, I heard “Just so,” in my head. It was something A would always say when I would describe or explain something and he agreed with my assessment. It was a verbal idiosyncrasy of his that, honestly, I adored. I don’t know if I am just filling in the blanks where he would’ve, or if it was him. I’d like to think so.