loss.

Dammit.

I did that thing again where I start a blog on my thoughts about the world and I let it sit for months and forget about it. I don't know what about having an actual blog makes me less inclined to write than having random pieces of paper and Word documents that I scribble down observations in any other time.

It's the rough times, though, that get me thinking, evaluating, pondering. And so, the theme of this post is loss.

A week ago, I received the very sad news that a woman I've known for over almost a decade lost her fight with breast cancer (the second one) and passed, leaving behind her parents, a niece, and an incredibly loving and devoted husband. This was the second time she fought breast cancer; the first time, she lost a breast and all of her hair. This time, she permanently lost her hair, and most tragically, her life.

It would be wrong of me to pretend that I knew her any better than as an acquaintance on the field, as a good-spirited competitor, but an intimidating and at times distant fellow ultimate player/role model in my early days of ultimate frisbee. But it is impossible to describe a person or value their impact on the world around them by the one relationship that I had with her. The smiles she generated, the many, many people who loved her and held her so close to her heart.

The loss of anyone, anything familiar is difficult and shocking. I felt like I had been slapped across the face, hard, or that my lungs stopped working for a moment when I read the news, in those sad, sad words that her husband affixed to his homepage: "Rest in peace, my love."

Why couldn't cry, reading those words?

No one knows why a disease might take one 36-year old woman and spare a woman in her 70s who thought she had stage III lung cancer after only 2 months of chemotherapy. No one. And perhaps that is why we cry. No one deserves this, no one, not the loved ones that are cast into years of grief following the departure of their beloved, not the victim, no one. And yet, we are subject to the wiles and inexplicable twists and turns of this strange malady that we have not yet been able to cure.

I cried really hard that day. And later that night. But it became apparent to me that I wasn't just grieving this young woman's death and the tragic end to her struggle, but the loss of others before her. My neighbor, a surrogate grandfather of sorts and a close friend of my parents; I still remember hugging him warmly, holding his weak, pale hand, saying "I'll see you when I'm home for Thanksgiving," knowing full well that I would not. I remember crying as I left him, hiding my tears from him, of course. I remember hearing that my high school friend was now an orphan, left with her younger sister and baby brother to be sent to their grandmother's house, having lost their father to his own decision to leave his children and having lost their mother to terminal breast cancer.

And I think of my friend. My high school friend who was not taken from this world by a disease or an accident, but by his own hand. I hate to be too graphic, but he cast his body off of the side of one of our magnificent man-made bridges after years of suffering in silence and darkness, though we were there, right next to him. I think that I think mostly of this friend, who always managed to save those around him, make them smile and laugh, make them feel good about themselves, but was unable to see all of the light and good in himself.

When I feel the sharp stab to the stomach, the catch of tears and a gasp in my throat, and the disbelief in my mind, translating to my face, it triggers all of it, all of the rush of confusion and fear and sadness and tears and anger and incomprehension that flooded into my mind when I first got the call that telling me from miles away that he was dead. Each loss triggers the memories of every other loss because they are all, each and every one of them, the same, in the end.

They are the same in that they bring immense heartbreak and inexplicable wounds to the soul.

But. They are also the same in that they come with the beautiful memories, the words, the sounds, the sights, the smells, the thoughts, the dreams, and the wishes that those beloved people left behind with us.

Losing a friend or someone you know is often a time to call Mom; lucky for me, I've got Mom for a long while still, but believe me, I don't take her or my own life for granted. She told me to remember that we don't just live for ourselves, but for those who have left us. They leave us with their lessons and stories so that we become a sort of cumulative being, absorbing and embodying those before us and later passing all of our stories on to another, whether that person be a daughter, father, sister, friend, neighbor...anyone.

So, I want to leave you with these words that these individuals left to us to remember. Do not forget.

From Linda:

"WHATEVER YOU CALL ME, DON'T YOU DARE CALL ME A QUITTER. 
I will fight. I celebrate life. I can not predict the course of my cancer. I will live each day for what it is and give thanks that I got to show up. And marvel at the beauty in it all. Live in the light, not in the fear. Breathe in. Breathe out. It truly is all good."

From David:

"I’ll leave you with this:
Do the things that will make you proud.
Struggle as hard as you can for whatever you believe in.
Corny and generic as they are, these are pretty much the only two rules I live by. I’ve found that in the face of uncertainty, when no one else is willing – or even able – to give me guidance, these two rules get me by. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t regret them because I know I live by these two rules and always will.

Best of luck."