In my pastoral counseling class for rabbinical school, we’ve been reading on the nature of loss in all its forms: loss of love, loss of health, love of future and its potential.
These readings hit home for quite a few people in my class, particularly in my own home, where we have been struggling with one setback after another for two years.
A year ago, right after our baby was born, my husband was crippled by the searing pain of an L4-L5 disc herniation; it was eventually repaired, but pain and other symptoms still linger. Meanwhile, I developed my own popourri of woes attributed to hypermobility syndrome — a condition whereby one’s joints become too flexible, because my body’s collagen is being manufactured incorrectly.
These experiences have given me a powerful lesson in what it means to “mourn.” I had always thought of mourning and grief as things that happen when a person you love dies. Arthur Frank, in his book “At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness,” offers a much broader perspective from his experiences battling cancer. This excerpt, from the chapter “Mourning What Is Lost,” flies open the doors to just how broad mourning and grief can go. He explains it like this:
The loss that accompanies illness begins in the body as pain does, then moves out until it affects the relationships connecting that body to others. My awkward attempts to avoid commitments I was not sure I could fulfill only made people think I was distancing myself from them. I acted not from lack of freiendship but because my body was taking me out of their natural flow of plans and expectations. I lost my sense of belonging … The inability to make specific plans is only the beginning of the loss of belonging. … Loss of the future is complemented by loss of the past. …
Middle age insinuates itself slowly into our bodies and lives. It is the time when on a good day you can still kid yourself into thinking you are as young as ever. Several nights before my surgery, I looked myself in a mirror. My body I saw was not the body I had had at 22 or even 30, but it retained for me a continuity of those bodies. The changes, the deteriorations, had been gradual.
That night I knew that after surgery, I would never be the same. It would irrevocably break my body’s continuity with its past. When you say goodbye to your body, as I was going that night, you say goodby to how you have lived. … Other losses went beyond the body. Cathie and I had always hoped that if the worst happened, friends and relatives would respond with care and involvement. Some came through. Other disappeared. We now find it hard to resume relationships with those who could not acknolwedge the illness that was happening, not just to me but to us. Those relationships were lost.
Together, Cathie and I lost an innocence about the normal expectation of life. At one time it seemed normal to expect to work and accomplish certain things, to have children and watch them grow, to share their experiences with others, to grow old together. Now we realize that these events may or may not happen. Life is contingent. We are no longer sure what it is normal to expect.
… These losses of future and past, of place and innocence, must all be mourned. We should never question how another person chooses to mourn. I was fortunate to have a wife to share my mourning. Sharing losses seemed to be the gentlest way of living with them.
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Several hundred years ago, a great rabbi, the Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav, scripted his own prayer for these moments of loss. Here are his words from The Gentle Weapon: Prayers for Everyday and Not-So-Everyday-Moments. I have chosen my own translations for his use of the word “God”:
Dear Soil From Which I Come,
suddenly I am alone; I am in pain.
As I search for some source
of comfort
the world —
the world so full so bustling —
seems so empty now.
It’s cold
and it’s frightening
in this hollow that is me —
in this hollow that once brimmed
with confidence and joy.
Creator, pull me back —
back to the world of the living,
back to the life of action
and human relationships.
(LM 1:277)
It’s a beautiful prayer that brings relief to simply read.
What are your thoughts? Have you experienced a loss that makes Frank’s or Nachman’s words resonate? I’d love to hear your stories or reactions.
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Where’s a Good Yenta When You Need One!? No need to sulk; The Matchmaker Rabbi is in! To see Joysa’s columns for Jdate, visit here. Her forthcoming book on dating in Jewish suburbia is being represented by Red Sofa Literary Agency.
WanderingHebrew.com 
Your author friend has left out some things. The most fundamental is that I have lost the ability to keep my promises. I have friends who once counted on me to be there for them, and I can’t be there as I would like to be. I have to choose between being there for them for a relatively short period of time, compared to not being there even for myself for a longer period of time. I can’t recover from a tiring day with a night’s sleep any longer. For example, I got a relatively minor cold with a cough that was interrupting my sleep. Just the coughing was exhausting. That ended 2 weeks ago and I still don’t have enough energy to catch up with the laundry and other housework I didn’t get done while I had the cold. I’m improving, but not fast enough. If a friend called me with a crisis today, I’d be able to listen to them on the phone for a while. Beyond that, I’m pretty much useless. If it was a life and death crisis, I’d go and live with the consequences, but the reality is that responding in that way is just as likely to make me part of the problem ias of part of the solution.
Oddly, chronic disease is also difficult for physicians to handle emotionally. We all like to win. Feeling helpless in the face of a problem starts to wear thin after a few years, and the physician starts to show frustration, or lack of attention. You have to find someone new. And auditioning new doctors is tiring all by itself.
Your real friends at this point are those who can learn to live with your shortcomings. At a party, I can help with set up, but I can’t help with clean up. By the end of the party, I’m tired enough that my coordination is gone and I make more messes than I remove. I have one friend tuned in well enough that she can recognize when it’s time to take me home from the opposite end of the convention floor. I’m well enough these days that cancelling on plans is a rarity (or maybe I’ve learned to make fewer plans) but it still happens and it takes a real friend to understand and either go alone, or find someone else to play with on short notice.
The internet is a life saver for me. I means that I can respond when I’m able, rather than when you are asking. So if I’m exhausted and asleep, I can still communicate with you even if you write at 5:00 and I don’t read it until midnight.
It was surprising to find this post in my email just as my family and I are traveling to the hospital 90 miles away for my son-in-law’s surgery. He’s struggled with mobility issues for several years. I’ve watched the deterioration of his ability to care for himself , drive, control the movements of his body and seen the deterioration of his social life. Family and friends do there best to support him. But, nonetheless there is loss and grief over that loss.
Personally, because of a chronic pain syndrome, I know first hand the loss of control and social life. I can’t count the number of social occasions I’ve backed out of or refused to commit to because I never know when I will be able to fulfill a commitment. Its a lot of loss and loneliness.
Gail and Karen, thank you. You said more than I could hope to say. Your stories complete the story … and open the door for others too.