On Finding Wholeness After Loss
When my mother died, it blew up my whole life. I didn’t know any other young people who wanted to talk about death. I didn’t know if I believed in anything after death. I didn’t know how to tell anyone what had happened. I didn’t know how to be a person at all.
I remember older people in my life telling me that I just needed time, that time would “heal all my wounds.” I found this sentiment annoyingly in-actionable and doubly obnoxious because I so, so badly wanted to believe it was true. There was a decimated, scorched place in my life where my mother had been, and I could not even imagine what it would mean to heal.
Answering that question and finding a place where I could continue to talk about death was a huge part of my motivation to become a therapist.
“if you are grieving, I cannot emphasize enough how powerful it is to find someone who understands what you are experiencing.”
This year marked the twelve-year anniversary of my mother’s death. My grief is a dwindling feeling. I am running out of beautiful photos of her. I don’t really remember her voice. Writing about her at all feels like a stretch. I don’t have much new to say about death after twelve years.
Twelve also feels like an in- between year that has no special significance. It’s not a decade, it’s not a small number, nor is it a huge one. But it turns out that it’s a famously and cross-culturally mystical symbol of cosmic order and completeness. Twelve months in a year, twelve years of Jupiter’s orbit, twelve signs of the zodiac. Nearly every religious and mythical person has had twelve children, animals, trials. There are also twelve cranial nerves, twelve thoracic vertebrae. The list goes on.
I can imagine that you’re looking for something about wholeness and not a meditation on a number, but here is the thing: death is disastrous. It’s bleak and despairing. It doesn’t make sense and it’s certainly not tidy. The meaning we make of it, however arbitrary, is the meaning of it.
When those people told me that I needed time I thought they meant to feel better, and in some ways, I do. Twelve years ago I had the decimated, scorched place and now I have a whole life that’s complete without my mother. And because of my mother I get to sit with people in grief therapy and make use of what I’ve learned. I get to make her death mean something again and again.
To be honest, when I sit with clients who are new in their grief, I sometimes feel a tinge of jealousy. I am jealous of how close, how powerful their connection is to the dead. The beginning stages of grief allow for such invention, such magic. The person lives in your mind with intense vividness. Pain, anger, denial, bargaining, depression. The heat still rises off that decimated place.
Wherever you are in your grief, my invitation is for you to try and find the piece of you that can feel, I mean really, presently feel the loss. That part, which I can imagine causes you so much pain, will change. It isn’t sustainable to be a part of two worlds forever. The soil will cool and eventually, things will grow.
To find wholeness after a loss, my experience is that you’ll likely have to give something up, and in doing so, you’ll find a new, quieter grief. You won’t break down, you won’t wail in public. New, unexpected things will appear in places of yourself you’d given up on. Whole days will pass when you don’t think of loss at all. Some things will fade and you’ll never get them back. But to be whole does not mean that you’ll lose the connection entirely.
The meaning you can make of loss—it’s endless.
Anna Kim is an Associate Clinical Social Worker, a writer, and an adventurer. Anna works with individuals, intimate relationships, families, and groups to support growth and change. She is especially interested in grief & loss, identity & authenticity, and attachment, but appreciates all the infinite, complicated parts of being alive.
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