What’s Lost, What’s Left, What’s Possible

I lost five relatives this year. The two oldest and most revered women in our family both moved on after beautiful, wild and peaceful existences—despite all the attempts to mar, tame and disturb them during their century on earth as Black women.

The cousin closest to my age, who I used to play with on my grandmother’s porch as a child, died from congestive heart failure—but also from systemic oppression. His mother, my mother’s sister and best friend, passed away not long after from complications of various sorts—and don’t we all? Then, somewhere in between all of that, my father’s cousin, one of the funniest and boldest of the Fishers, left us as well.

This tally doesn’t even capture the funerals of the loved ones who were loved by my loved ones or the unknown neighbors taken by flooding in my home state or the people who raised me from inside the television or poetry collections—people I now know with certainty I will never meet or even bump into during my own time on this planet.

It has been a hard year—a year that has me not only feeling grievous but also thinking a lot about grief.

Death is the most socially agreed-upon loss—the experience that translates most easily when asking off from work or bailing on plans. But it isn’t the only, or even necessarily the most profound, loss we are expected to manage throughout the days of our lives.

One of my favorite classes when I was studying to become a social worker was called “Grief and Loss,” which sounded slightly less depressing than the “Death and Dying” class I avoided in my undergraduate studies. And though the distinction may seem small, I think my inclination to move toward one and not the other demonstrated a particular understanding of myself and the material.

On the first day of “Grief and Loss,” we filled out an “inventory of loss,” and I was surprised to find many of the items were “happy” things—marriage, moving, and (impending) motherhood were a few that stood out to my youthful eyes.

This was the first time I learned all change is a type of loss—because to gain one experience, opportunity or relationship is to let go of another.

It is nice to have a new house, but you miss your old neighbors and the junk drawer was better at the old place. Being married might mean having someone to share a bed with, but it also might mean having someone to share your money with. It can be joyful to carry a child and it can be (pun intended) a lot to bear—not just for the bones but for the brain, for one’s entire sense of being, in fact.

And in a year when, on top of all that, so many are also losing healthcare, residency and bodily autonomy, it is essential that we understand how to be present to the pain of loss that is all around us.

Here are some reminders I still use as an educator, practitioner and neighbor, all these years after that surprisingly lovely little class.

Loss is subjective

If it is real to the one experiencing it, then it is real loss. Compassionate friends and allies will resist the urge to rush to a “reframe” or enter into the “at least” game:

“Yes, your rights are being challenged, but at least…”

“At least you were able to conceive.”

“Well, at least you learned something from it!”

Grieving people are rarely lacking for these bright-sidey “encouragements,” not to mention even more careless sentiments like, “It was only a dog.” These responses are rooted in supremacist notions of “one right way,” in which a mourner can be told if, when and for how long their pain is “reasonable” or acceptable.

Loss has stages (or spirals or spaces)

Kübler-Ross’s model provides some of the most well-known categorizations of grief. However, I really love a simple model described by John Schneider. His three “spirals” are “What’s lost,” “What’s left,” and “What’s possible.”

In “What’s lost,” the focus for a mourner is all the primary and secondary losses they are experiencing. In this grief space, the emphasis is on taking inventory and feeling the weight of what is no longer. It is good and right to do so—which is why so many cultures have practices like sitting shiva or “wailing women” to honor the profundity of something once held and now gone.

Spending time in this space allows one to eventually—or intermittently—survey “What’s left?” Who or what is still here to care for me or to be taken care of by me?

When and if these logistics are given the requisite time and resourcing, an individual or family can move into the space of “What’s possible.” Here, at our own pace, we can each begin to dream, reclaim, and practice resurrection.

Loss does not always require therapy

Listen, I am a social worker and a highly therapized lady. I could not be more biased about how important, necessary and life-saving therapy can be.

Still, mental health care is not always accessible or culturally appropriate for the people in our lives, and at times, the quick and intense push for therapy is more about checking a person’s grief off our own to-do list than it is about an accurate assessment of the griever’s need.

So yes, recommend therapy—but make sure it’s not an offering you give flippantly or substitutionally. Stay present, aware and open to the many paths of healing a mourner might require, not the least of which are time and company.

If all change is “loss,” and if we each bemoan our many life transitions, both chosen and delivered, then I imagine we might benefit from these reminders to guide us through all that has been taken, all that remains, and all that could yet be.

May we, even in the hardest of years, each find slivers of hope hovering around us, patiently waiting to be invited back in—or, at the very least, grab hold of some to pass on to a neighboring body who is also still wandering the earth, wondering how to be alive.