One of my favorite topics is success. I enjoy succeeding and I enjoy it when others succeed. I enjoy watching people try to succeed. I cry at live performances, even when I don’t know them. I appreciate their effort. It touches my soul. The other day, I realized someone who had more resources than me had failed. That made me happy. It wasn’t their failure that made me happy. Their failure gave me permission to forgive myself for my failing.
They say, “Time heals all wounds.” It doesn’t. It is what we do with the time. Grieving the loss of a loved one takes time and it takes using that time to heal. My dad died over 12 years ago. That threw me. The intensity of it went through stages and there were spontaneous waves of grief. By seven months it felt manageable and more in line with other losses I had known.
When my daughter died three years ago, it was similar in the pain I felt. Losing Dad was easier though because he spent the last 18 months of his life slipping away. We had built in closure. What I felt with Dad’s death was simple and pure grief. It was clear of any guilt, or regret, or anger. Simply grief. There was success. Together he and I had checked off all the boxes. Our last phone conversation, the day before he died, was sweet and loving and I cherish it. Also, he had tried so hard to live. There was a good chance he would have. I was on my way to see him and I knew it could have gone either way. He tried to regain his health.
He died anyway.
I didn’t get only grief with my daughter. Her death was entangled with other emotions: some guilt, much regret, a bit of anger, and shock at the sudden and surprise timing. Everything felt more like failure than any glimmer of success. The failure was widespread. It wasn’t just me who had failed. She had failed. Others had failed. There was systemic failure. When failure causes death, the pain in the grief is miles beyond that of the pure grief of even the most treasured of loved ones.
If success is sweet, death causing failure is most bitter.
If Dad took me seven months, my daughter took me twenty-four. Last year I rounded a corner and the shattering of spirit and mind type of grief had lifted off of me. There were still the crying jags. I don’t mind crying, I am in fact a great crier. Better out than in, I always say. Not a fan of breakdowns in front of people when to them it looks like no apparent reason. It gets old being the mother of a dead daughter.
I call it grief fatigue. Other deaths make everything worse. There seem to be so many these past few years. Some I can isolate and give full heartbreak to and mourn. Others have to wait, and are still in the queue. I especially hate the surprise ones and the ones of those I had pinned my hopes on, my little oases and refuge.
They too died anyway.
Anyway, it was someone else’s failure that gave me peace and uplifted my heart a few levels. A celebrity family with similar issues had lost a loved one a couple of years before my daughter died. It was the recent news of the anniversary that got my attention and made me see things a bit more clearly. It occurred to me, the family had so much more resources than I or my daughter had. More money, more help, more time together, more experts, more programs, more successes, and she died anyway.
It helped me to have compassion for myself. The same compassion I had shown my other daughter when her father died a couple of years ago. She was beside herself after he died in her regret of not spending more time with him when he asked her to join him in different activities. I told her, she couldn’t judge her August’s self by October’s wisdom gained by her father’s dying and death in September.
The death of a loved one changes us forever. We tend to be wiser, but it is wisdom borne of loss.
Of course I would do things better if I could go back in time. That’s true for most of my past, because precious little of my past was perfect. All the same, I did my best at the time. As Maya Angelou says, I did better when I knew better. Still, best or better is seldom perfect.
Yes, someone else’s failure gave me the insight to forgive myself of my failure. With all these failures, why even try? Because, that’s why we are here. We are here to help one another, to love one another, and to accept help and love from others.
It seems if one is meant to die, nothing we do will save them. People fail all the time. Family, friends, loved ones, doctors, experts, we all fail. At the same token, if one is meant to live, they will. We see miracles and breakthroughs and slim chances. Circumstances and people turn around and come back from the brink of death.
We do what we can. That’s why we’re here. In Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Tarfon would say, “It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it.”
We are here to do the task of helping where we can and whom we can. We may not finish, we may not succeed.
In the Book of Esther, Mordechai asks Queen Esther to go to the King and plead for her people. She was hesitant; going before the King without being invited could result in a death penalty. Mordechai said it was her choice, no matter what, events would unfold with or without her. Her people would be saved anyway. It was her choice to take part and claim her role in this.
We are all Queen Esther. People are saved anyway. People die anyway. We are here to take part. We are here to do our task. How it all comes out is not on us. How we want to be a part of it all is on us. We do our best. We succeed. We fail. It will come out anyway.
Anyway,
(The End.)
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