At some point in time, anyone who has lost a loved one and is grieving has asked the question why? What was the reason for this one to have to leave? Why now — why not after a long and fulfilling life? Or in the depths of extreme grief — why is this happening to me?? Meaning
Then come the platitudes – “Only the good die young” etc etc. They don’t really help except to make us think that we’re not going to die young because obviously we are not good. But once the worst of the grief has diminished and it does — then sanity prevails and with it comes the realization that yes death does come to all of us, but we don’t have to like it much. Death is as much a part of our lives as is living.
So for the last nineteen years, I’ve been searching, looking for the meaning in the death of my daughter at a time when it seemed that her life was really just beginning. She had a whole world of options for living and yet she chose death. Still, it was her life to choose — living or dying, and for those of us left behind it is up to us to make some sort of meaning from it all. Of course, we look at the situation from our own eyes, and see what we think we would do in the same circumstances. We can’t know what she was thinking but we are left to make assumptions about her thoughts. And unless it was written down in her handwriting any reasons we create are just that — creations and not fact.
We search for the meaning and look for ways to apply that meaning to our own life. I decided early on, within the first year or two that I needed to accept Kelly’s death as her choice and then to make the best I could from that. Now when I look back on the last decade or so I can see that her death not only changed me, but it changed my way of thinking and looking at life. Everything that has happened to me and my life since her death has come from the space of life after Kelly. I don’t sit and think poor me, but rather I remember her with love and gratitude.
It has been a good life so far — and I intend to have a lot more of it yet. Yes there have been lots of ups and downs, but everyone has those, they don’t happen just because she died. Perhaps they would have happened anyway — who knows. It doesn’t really matter because what matters is how I’ve dealt with them, and I believe that Kelly’s death has made me stronger in many ways. Yes, I’m still vulnerable, but I have a greater inner strength because of her death. So I’ve looked for the positive from it and I chose not to look at my loss as the end of my world — well it seemed that way in the first months. Life is meant for living and is not to be wasted on regrets and wishes. I was blessed to have had Kelly in my world for almost twenty years, and I’ve learnt many valuable lessons from her death.
I’ve been reading Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl his tribute to hope from the Holocaust and he says :
“Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.”
