This past year, we have all experienced so much loss and experienced so much grief — in relationships, through sickness and death, from mental illness or abuse, because of finances, even due to the need for healthy change.
It is good to honor those shifts, to fully feel them, so that we can let go of what needs surrendered, and remember what is worthy of our love and gratitude.
What have you lost, what are you grieving?
Today, the answer that is screaming to me is, Guildford. And by Guildford I mean the Guildford office, and by the Guildford office I mean the people in it. It has been three days at HQ, and today was the day that I finally got my head around the idea that I wasn’t going back to Guildford. (Which makes sense. I have previously worked at HQ for two consecutive days, but never three.)
I said I would miss them all horribly, and I am. The interesting thing is that when I said that, I had no conception of what missing people actually feels like. (Similarly, I said the commute would wear me out, and it is, and I had completely forgotten what fatigue is actually like.) I have been thinking things like, right about now somebody will be making a detailed plan for surviving a zombie apocalypse, and the rest of the team will be standing around pointing out the flaws in this. Stands the church clock at ten to three? And is Laura asking who wants tea?
I am playing with the idea that I am leaving, not losing, these people. I am remembering that moving on was necessary, and that it will have been what I needed to do.
I’m going to the pub with them next Friday, and then the Friday after that.
Going backwards – I am not grieving for the Woking flat. I might have expected to, had I known I’d leave it this year, but I’m not. It was four years of my life, four good years, but the end was sour, and exhausting. I do get a little twinge of nostalgia when I pass through Woking on the train, but I’ve moved on from there fairly painlessly.
And Melbury – my father’s too large, too crowded, too ruinous house. No, I don’t miss Melbury. Brigitte, gone to Nigel. She was going to be my bus, but I don’t need a bus. Nigel will look after her far better than any of the rest of us.
Other people’s grief: not mine to talk about, so I shan’t.
Way back at the beginning of the year: Cousin David, who will be resting in peace and rising in glory. That grief is done, and good things happened. Cousins I didn’t know. The assurance of the validity of my own spirituality.
Leaving, not losing. Loving and letting go.
Kathleen Jowitt 