MOURNING PERIOD: WHO SETS THE CLOCK

Loss affects everyone; response to loss varies.

A death in the family can be a devastating event, and it can be a release.

Sudden death is the stunner. One moment the lights are on, the next it’s all dark.

No good bye, no so long, no nothing, just an empty place where someone used to be.

This is for them.

A smart, pretty, girl moved to town in Junior High. She was different than everyone else, but not so much the others didn’t like her.

Instead, she helped the girls in our class change. She was a window into the future, and they liked what they saw through her eyes.

Then she moved away.

She moved away before high school, but her spirit remained. Girls who seemed destined to follow in the proud high school tradition of joining the parking lot social club, wearing dark coats, and smoking cigarettes, surprised each other by joining modern dance and going to school play auditions.

One girl outshined the rest with her effort and ambition. She looked and sounded like show business from the beginning. If anyone would get ‘discovered’ it was her.

Friday night she was a high school girl with no ceiling to stop her; she didn’t come to school Monday. Instead, all of her friends were crying.

It was my first peer death, and it was sudden. Some guys in class had brothers who had died in Vietnam, but this was an unexpected, out of the blue, why her, moment that lasted a lifetime.

I’ve seen the same sparkle she carried at every awards show where the winners made their way onstage after being announced. Yes, they are actors, but in the moment between hearing their name called taking the mic on stage, they are the most alive people on earth.

The same spark of potential fires up every day, but how often do we notice? We don’t. Why?

We’re too busy mourning ourselves to notice.

How many times have you sung along to a familiar song and hit it just right on the chorus, then go flat on the verse? Instead of a ‘man I suck’ moment, why not celebrate the twenty seconds of harmony?

The audience may think you suck, but why join them? Make a vow to get better and move on.

But no, we get stuck on the suck instead and feel too embarrassed to sing in public, or even share the idea that we don’t suck as much as it sounds.

Gave up too early? Let the mourning begin.

What do you call the pervasive sense of doom that calls every day? Is it depression? Anxiety? Or is it mourning youth slipping away.

The moment you can’t do what you used to do, that thing that made you feel accomplished, polished, like a high achiever, is worth mourning. But it’s not worth building a life around.

I’ve seen sadness. So have you. Sometimes it’s unbearable sadness that feels like years of crap stacked in your head about to fall over.

Will it fall out of your ear when it goes? No, the only thing falling our of our ears is the sound of finishing something. And we ignore it.

Tell me something you’re good at, but just not as good as you’d like to be, so you quit. Convince me it was a good decision.