Changed, but still there
Human response to loss changes over time, but a void remains
I am fortunate to lead an interesting life filled with many diverse people (in my family alone, but extending across years and miles), and my insatiable mind embraces seemingly disconnected interests, leading to so many opportunities to expand my life. There are moments when the multitude of strands that constitute my life seem a bit jumbled, and unless I take intentional time to take a broader view, I can feel pulled in too many directions all at once.
When I can see the deeper connections, though, my life takes on a new sense of orientation, and when things come together, it feels like an audible “click” in my soul as yet another brick in my life’s foundation is secured with the mortar of relationship.
Yesterday was one of those days. Up early as usual, I followed my normal pattern, adding a few necessary household tasks between time in my home office. By mid-morning it was time to travel two hours to the metro area for a denominational committee meeting. Following that meeting I picked up dinner for the parents of my newest grandson, and together the five of us enjoyed a meal together. I visited with my nearly-two-year-old granddaughter, held her month-old baby brother close to my chest, his warm little body bolstering my spirits. The parents of this young family share my spiritual passions and honor Claudia’s and my parenting legacy in ways that fill my soul, so by the time I began to drive back home in the early darkness that is November, I felt abiding joy. En route to my home, one of my local sons called and we talked for nearly an hour.
During our cell phone conversation, we reflected together (as we often do) about the loss of his mother, my wife. He said, “Yeah, I was thinking about something at work and picked up my phone to text Mom … and then I remembered.” I commiserated, acknowledging how many times during the day I do the same thing. We reminded one another that while grief following loss changes over time, and in some ways gets better, it is always there. His summary: “It’s a void that will always be there.” I was pretty impressed with his conclusion, erudite and mature beyond his educational level, but not his life experience.
And then this morning I was reminded by a Minnesota Public Radio broadcast that we are three days away from the 50th anniversary of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a catastrophic event on the Great Lakes when all twenty-nine crew members perished in the midst of a ferocious early November storm. You may remember the 1976 Gordon Lightfoot song that memorialized the event:
I was eleven when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, and I can remember the early news reports on the flickering black-and-white screen of the only television in our home from the only station we could access in north-central Minnesota in the mid-1970s. Initially the report was concern that the ship had lost contact, and then the reality hit that the stolid, durably-built liner was gone forever, and with it the twenty-nine brave souls who regularly worked Lake Superior, more dangerous in the Fall than the Atlantic or the Pacific.1
After fifty years the Edmund Fitzgerald’s fate is a haunting reminder of how fragile our lives are, and how in just a few brief but significant minutes, everything can change. Family members of the downed ship still grieve. Those of us in close geographical proximity still experience the shock of the news reports and the biting reality of loss, even if vicarious. Although the shock is gone, the void of loss remains.
In the midst of these disparate strands in my life, I take time to contemplate, allowing my mind and soul to meld together what I’ve experienced and what life has brought me over the past twenty-four hours. What emerges for me is a simple truth:
Significant loss changes us forever, and the grief we experience changes and morphs over time, but the void remains. Our lives move onward, the absence is still real, but the strands of connection are stronger than ever, reminding us, enlivening us, strengthening us, whispering in my soul: “It will never be the same, but it will be okay.”
And for this morning, that’s enough.
There are a number of excellent documentaries (just google the phrase), and a very good recent, shorter telling of the event is at
Very true 🥲
❤️🩹