Lately I have been thinking about loss. I have been thinking about the way people move in and out of our lives. So much of the impact of loss lies within us. The depth and severity and trauma and sorrow and emptiness are all things that reside clearly and deeply within us. Because thoughts of loss have been dwelling at the fringes of my consciousness I have noticed loss in a variety of mediums.
Back in March, a casual friend of mine moved out of the Bay Area for career reasons. We’re still in contact, email, IM, and phone, so in comparison to other forms of loss about the only thing I truly lost what the immediacy of their physical presence. One of the reasons it struck me was the unexpectedness – not of their moving (they had been considering it for a long time) – but the depth with which I physically felt their loss. It seemed to me disproportional.
Now, it may be that due to the high level of work stress I was under the emotional experience of the loss amplified. I do suspect that was a good part of it – the transference of emotions from one arena to another arena. But, for whatever reason it made me sensitive to loss. It gave me a greater awareness of loss, both surrounding me in my personal life, and oddly enough, in the portrayal of loss in the media, specifically novels and movies.
About the time they left and I felt the loss, which manifested itself is constantly thinking about them, wondering where they were and what they were going through, I was reading the book “Killing Rommel”. The lead character in the novel was fighting in North Africa during WWII. The character deals with the death of friends and a nearly three year separation from their wife.
In the last couple of days I have seen several movies, all of which deal with loss as a subplot. If you haven’t seen any of them, you might want to stop here so I don’t spoil them, but let me talk briefly about three movies I have seen in the last couple of days that deal with loss – “Hancock”, “Wanted”, and “The Dark Knight”. All of these are clearly fiction, but fiction is a mythical mirror of the themes that run through our life.
In “Hancock” the two lead characters are immortal (superhero) lovers. However there is a catch attached to it. When they are together – they become mortal. They become vulnerable. Their enemies can kill them. “Hancock” proposes an interesting question about loss. What do we do if our love for someone actually hurts that person, makes them weaker, makes them more vulnerable. Can we, or should we, trade the pain of our loss of love, for the strength of the one we love. In the climatic scene of the movie, Will Smith’s character must physically run away from his love exactly at her moment of greatest jeopardy, because by distancing the love he empowers her. Whew. That would be a tough thing to do. That would run counter to every instinct within me.
In “Wanted” the lead character has never known his father. He believes that his father abandoned him in his infancy. Ultimately, through the twists and turns of the plot, he discovers the truth about his father, and though his father is lost to him, he deals with the loss by becoming his father – almost literally, ending the movie in his fathers clothing, living in his fathers house, taking up his fathers epic hero journey. Within the movie, as a subplot, Angelina Jolie’s character has also traumatically lost her parents and has replaced that loss with dedication to a cause (not an unusual replacement). She has transformed her capacity for love to dedication to a cause. In the climatic scenes of her character, she is confronted with the loss of the object of that dedication, discovering that it is has been corrupted and she must make a choice, to remain faithful to her love, even though her love has betrayed her and even though that faithfulness will lead to her destruction. Her character does not hesitate and chooses to remain faithful to the ideal, even though the reality betrayed her.
In “Dark Knight” Batman and Harvey Dent both love the same woman. She is killed by the Joker. Having never experienced it, I almost cannot imagine the trauma of losing “the love of my life”. As a result of it, the two characters make two very different decisions. Harvey Dent is broken by it, becoming Two Face (a villain in the Batman canon). Batman, though badly battered by it, remains true to his nature, the loss strengthening him.
Though these are modern pop culture depictions of loss, all neat and tidy within the framework of movies, they are all also true depictions of loss. Loss happens, it is part of the nature of life – we are born, we live, we die. How we react to loss is what shapes us.
When I lost my friend (as minor as that loss was) it inspired me to reach out and touch those people who matter to me and simply let them know they matter.
It is astounding, to me, the power of a note, a call, a comment – whether given or received. Just reach out and express that value. It is how we react to loss that gives it value and meaning. There are a huge variety of ways we can react to the losses in our lives. How we react to them shapes us. For some it is an inspiration. For some it is a breaking point. For most of us it is probably a combination of both. None of that makes the immediacy of loss, whatever it's form, any easier to deal with.
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