Inter-Dependence Days

Loss has pushed me into a new way of relating

Source: Stockcake.

In the United States today is a national holiday, Independence Day. Two hundred forty-nine years ago our political ancestors had enough of tyranny and restraint, so they made public what had been brewing for some time: they declared their independence. It was a point of demarcation, a line in the sand which signaled the colonial mood had forever shifted. Nothing would be the same again.

Nations celebrate political events as corporate markers of change; individuals recollect personal experiences as individual moments for transformation. These events and experiences can be positive (Independence Day and wedding anniversaries, for example) or they can be somber (Memorial Day and funeral services), but we humans flourish when we remember and reflect upon significant events in our life experience.

For those of us who are actively grieving, ever before us are the events and decisions leading up to our loved one’s death. I will always remember — indeed, I cannot forget — discovering my wife’s unconscious body on our bedroom floor. The sounds, sights and smells of the hospital ICU are permanently seared into my mind (which, as a pastor, presents a bit of a professional challenge, but I’ll work through that in time). My last moments with Claudia following life support removal are holy and haunting at the same time. Our human brain latches on to traumatic experiences with the ferocity of a black lab gnawing its smoked beef marrow bone.¹

I am not a trauma expert, but in living with my most recent traumas, I am discovering that at least for now — maybe forever? — one of my best strategies for contending with such grave loss is to augment my life. Since I cannot find freedom from my traumatic memories, I am finding liberation by broadening my life. Flooding myself with new ways of thinking and living wash away some of the effects of trauma. I wish there were some simple, surgical procedure to extract the malignancy of trauma and replace it with life-giving cells. To find emotional independence from the pain would be a kindness, but it doesn’t work that precisely or cleanly.

While today cannot be emotional independence day for me, I will continue to stretch forward by pursuing relational inter-dependence days. To live in Western society is to be in a world that prizes autonomy (“independence”) more than most anything else, but I am discovering that to flourish, I need to seek inter-dependence, by which I mean purposely seeking ways to connect with others on a deeper, more-than-surface level. When we are inter-dependent, we own who we are and what we have to offer others, and we share ourselves appropriately with the world around us. With this outward-facing approach to life, we learn to receive from others the gifts they have to offer us, as well. The picture of inter-dependency in our human world, then, is not of autonomous cells with rigid boundaries bumping against one another. The image is of semi-autonomous organisms with permeable boundaries, aligning with one another in ways that provide greater stability and wholeness together.

I would not be living this intentionally were it not for my wife’s thirty-year example. While she was living I had the luxury of flying in her airstream, most of the time gliding beside or behind the flow her extroverted, people-loving presence created. I loved that about her: she could live “big” in the world, while I could support her intentionality. I was along for the ride, and I was content with that.

But death created a line of demarcation for me. After her death, I can no longer benefit from Claudia’s God- and people-loving ways by simply being her life partner. Like the early North American colonists who could no longer depend on Mother England for their individual flourishing, I am in a tenuous, but promising, situation. Benjamin Franklin reminded his co-conspirators, “We must, indeed, hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately.” In the midst of that first Declaration of Independence, Franklin recognized it was also a day of inter-dependence.

Now, nearly two hundred fifty years later, that truth remains: a day of independence, coupled with inter-dependence creates opportunity for genuine human flourishing. While such an orientation is fraught with peril — isn’t anything that really matters? — it seems to be working on the whole for our country, challenging as it is.

Grievers, loss has marked its presence in our lives. We cannot go back, but we can live into our new lives with courage and intentionality. Let’s seek and foster new and meaningful connections with those around us. Let’s give ourselves the freedom to move forward and to celebrate new and renewed relationships with others.

Happy Inter-Dependence Days to you and to those you (will) love!

1. This a real “thing.” Google it.