Loss

Jan. 20^th, Toronto

I am starting to appreciate the usage of the word “loss” in situations involving grieving. I feel very much as if K.B. is out there somewhere and I have simply “lost” her for a time. Just as if one’s child had run away in a park and one keeps calling out their name, part of me thinks that I can “find” her by doing the same. I look out of the window of the 17^th-floor condo where we are staying, scan the view of the wide expanse of north Toronto and its suburbs, and keep thinking, “K.B., where ARE you?”

Now I can begin to understand the desperation of those who reach out to mediums to help them “make contact” with a dead loved one. Such an action stems from the hope of finding what is lost. K.B. despised—in as much as her sweet nature would allow her to despise anyone or anything—mediums and psychics because she felt they were frauds who preyed on grieving people, exploiting their sadness for monetary gain. As someone who had experienced the deaths of her mother and brother at a young age, she knew well that sense of desolation. If she had not been the strong person, sure in her beliefs, that she was, she might have been tempted to think that contact with them was possible.

Whatever Heaven is like for her, is she able to perceive our broken-heartedness, our profound desire to “find” her? This we will never know while we still live. For those of us who are Christian believers, the knowledge that she is in a better place should be a consolation, but the reality of that barrier between the living and the dead can be maddening. Is Heaven a place above, beyond our reality? An alternate reality? What is it? Where is she?

I should try to focus instead on what our minister said when he came to visit us just days after her death. I was nearly hysterical that afternoon, and he tried to console me by gently explaining that these close bonds we form with others are permanent, eternal, not bound by the confines of human life. That I believe. Just because K.B. is in Heaven and I am here does not mean that our friendship is over. And I keep thinking of that line from the Ron Sexsmith song, “God Loves Everyone”: “…the living and the dead/ may we never lose the thread/ that binds us all.”