Switched-On Magazine

To lose someone close to you, whether it is through an irreparable rift in a relationship or the passing away of that person (at times both), is to be hit with a shock so disbelieving that it may be something you will come to contemplate for years on. It is a continual struggle to live on in spite of the grief that follows loss, and perhaps one you're not always aware is occurring in the first place.

It is far from easy to move on from a point of loss in your life. Does the pain of loss become effaced completely at the passing of time? For some people who have dealt with loss, the pain may always be there. It can feel isolating to be feeling the weightiness of grief. You may feel alienated that others don't seem as dragged down by the pain that follows loss, and the grief that comes after realizing that that person is gone forever. 

It's said that each individual human being is a part of a large network, and that one human being's loss could be another's. Looking at this situation from this way, when the person you've lost is gone from your life, chances are the pain of their loss is shared among other people. In that sense, you might be able to talk to those others about the grief you are experiencing, and talk through the pain. Even if to the people you come to discuss your feelings seem like strangers, they may be able to empathize with the emotions that plague you after that person has left your life.

Sometimes the hardest part of losing someone is accepting they are truly gone. This is a process that can be the most involved, the most taxing on your ability to cope. Your perspective of the world around you may be distorted by the missing piece that was occupied by that person. The lens through which you view the world may shatter at this realization, that individual you've lost is gone, forever. This painful realization, too, can be mitigated only through acceptance. Whatever the way you choose to overcome the inability to accept loss, for most it is a gradual process. 

Looking back at someone you have lost is like looking at something preserved at a museum; they are forever suspended in the fluid of your memories, open for display and examination whenever your mind seeks their presence. But the suspension of their being may be no substitute for the movement and energy of that person when they were in your life. You may feel compelled to look back at what you had experienced with that person, and look forward to what could have been, what could have happened if this or that hadn't occurred.

Even if it may feel as if those memories are the only thing that has survived from having that person in your life, at times it is the best we can do with.