Reflections on loss, this 11th day of September

I have lost a father at six

I have lost a mother at thirty-five.



A phone call in late evening. A cab ride to the hospital. A blazingly white waiting room and the smells unique to a hospital. Everyone is so nice to me. A nurse buys me a Coke.

"David, I need to tell you something."



A knock at the door at 12:35 AM. Knocks at the door and phone calls after Midnight are never good news.

A deputy sheriff stands on my porch.

"Mr. Allen, I am very sorry to have to inform you..."



One moment your life is proceeding down its mundane path, your mind full of "important" things like watching cartoons, or the client whose computer you have to fix in the morning.

Then, it all collapses into a singularity of agony.

Time distorts and slows.

Reality becomes starkly real, endlessly detailed and annotated. You become a raw nerve ending, absorbing information and filing it away. Smells, textures, sounds, the order of books on a shelf, other people engrossed in their lives, oblivious to the ragged scream echoing endlessly in your head.

Then there is the pain, the emptiness, the unbearable anguish. You look around and cannot understand how things can be so peaceful in the presence of such pain. In your mind's eye, the pain is ferocious. It lacerates you, tears into your heart and sprays the walls crimson with your life's blood. But when you open your eyes, there is no physical manifestation of this psychic mauling.

Sometimes you cry.

The wracking, inconsolable crying of a child, who knows his father is never coming back. In his mind, he sees all the moments of his life replayed, but now they are one person short. They will be one person short forever.

The crying is deep, unending, and ravenous. You cry until you have nothing left. No tears, no feeling other than total exhaustion.

Sometimes, the pain is too deep to cry.

It crushes you until you can't breath. You remember stupid angry words that now cannot be recalled or apologized for. You remember trivial things that were so important once. You want to remember the good times, but the time of reckoning is at hand, and each and every one of your sins is brought forth for judgment.

The pain is a tangible creature that LIVES in you, feeds on you. You can feel it move from the pit of your stomach and reach out to squeeze your heart until you collapse.

The past is gone. You can't see it anymore. The future is irrelevant. All that exists is now. And you hate now. You loathe it. You wish you could be anywhere else, except now.

Then, you are dimly aware of those around you. There are still people in the world. Some are very important to you. Spouses, children, siblings, parents... But know you see them differently. You hear phone calls in the night, bearing the regretful voices.

You lie in bed at night, listening to your wife breathe as she sleeps and are suddenly seized with terror when the next breath seems a fraction of a second too long in coming. You are instantly ice cold and sweat pours from you. The monster is back and devouring you.

You run to the bathroom and are sick.

There are still people in the world. They come up to you and mouth what they think are soothing words. You look at them, really look at them for the first time in your life. You look into their eyes and you search for understanding. Do they really understand? You close your eyes and listen for the scream that only exists in the mind. Have they heard that scream?

Do they understand?

My mom's cat understands.

When I came to her apartment the day she died, he was frantic. His comforting routine had stopped. He was waiting for her to come home, to make her cup of tea and toast, to sit in her lap and watch TV until she went to bed, then to curl up at her side and sleep.

He ran from room to room looking for her, imploring me to open every door of every room and closet. Then he would sit and stare at the front door, begging her to walk in.

I took him home and he searched my house. He never stopped hoping that, behind that next door, she was waiting for him.

A year after my mom died, I brought home some of her things from storage to sort out. I set down a basket of her clothes and he came up and sniffed them. Suddenly, he was electrified, and began running through the house crying for her. She had to be back, he could smell her.

Just behind that door.

Today, almost eleven years later, he still makes me open the doors for him.

Some people will tell you that the cat was just upset about the disruption in his routine. They call it "superstitious behavior". But I can close my eyes and hear the silent scream resonating in his heart.

He understands.



They tell you that over time, the pain goes away.

They lie.

It never goes away, you just smother the scream with the banalities of life. You pretend not to hear it anymore and tune it out.

But it is still there, waiting for you to wake up in the dead of night when all else is quiet. If you are lucky, those nights become fewer as time goes on, but you still live in dread of them.

For some, "those nights" are "every night".

People offer comfort, speak of "better places" and eventual reunions. Do they understand? You search their eyes for the tell-tale haunted look, a look which tells you they have sat up in the dark of night, and faced the ugly reality of loss.

As time goes on, the singularity of self begins to dissipate and for the first time you see a large scale tragedy and, for once, truly comprehend the magnitude of the loss. You look at thousands of people, tens of thousands or people, suddenly, thrown into the world you know too well. Suddenly you hear the screams of anguish and despair amplified ten thousand-fold.

Sometimes the loss is random and senseless.

Sometimes, it is vindictive and spiteful.

This latter will have some of those who suffer howling for vengeance. Sadly, sometimes they will get it, and in the process they will inflict this unbearable agony on others and create a self-feeding cycle of death.

There are two lessons which can be drawn from loss: One is that life is ultimately futile. All that we love will die and we cannot prevent this. We can let each death harden us, make us cavalier in our pronouncements and opinions about other people's lives. We can become dead while we yet breathe.

Or we can understand that each life is irreplaceable, and should be cherished, nurtured and loved. Those of us who have lost should remember the pain we share with others and try to guide the recently wounded back to the light. Those who have never experienced such a loss should close their eyes and try to imagine it, try to prepare for the day it comes to them. Try to understand the unfathomable. And while none of us can stop the random, senseless deaths, we should do all in our power to stop the vindictive, spiteful deaths. We should remember that the pain is no less acute because it happens to people we hate.

We all wake up at night in terror. We all hope to find what we have lost just behind the next door.