This weekend held a wide range of emotions from the high to the low. On Saturday I went to a bachelorette party for one of my closest friends. We lounged by the pool, chatted, and generally celebrated her impending marriage. It was a joy to spend time with her and other close friends of hers for the sole purpose of having fun. But I had another event this weekend and it was not a bachelorette party.
A family friend of mine passed away a couple of weeks ago and it’s sent shockwaves through my community. I say that because no one could have guessed he would have passed away. He was one of the most healthy, vibrant people I knew. When I think of him, I see him with a huge smile on his face, beaming out joy to the world. He was the same age as my parents so his death has me confronting their mortality as well. Layered on top of that, I grew up with his daughters so his death hits me in another way that’s hard to express. Sunday was his memorial service and I cried through most of the ceremony.
Seemed appropriate. Photo by Bryan Garces on Unsplash
But here’s the interesting part: joy and sorrow get to coexist within me, within us. Even during the memorial service we could hear his grandchildren laughing and playing in the background. It reminded me both emotions can be present. That joy and sorrow can be like the yin yang symbol with a little bit of white in the black and a little bit of black in the white. In my experience life is like that. Attending a wedding can bring up grief about being single. A funeral can bring not joy, but appreciation at reconnecting with friends, even if the circumstances are sad. This weekend was a study in that for me — pairing joy with sorrow.
Two years ago I wrote a poem about a similar experience following the death of a coworker called “Big Enough for Both:”
Big enough for both
Grief and celebration
A funeral and a wedding
Loss and gain
Hurting and healing
All at once
Altogether
Everything
Everything
Everything
That’s what life is like for me right now, maybe for all of us. It’s heartbreaking and heart-gladdening. It’s happy and sad. It’s frustrating and peaceful. It’s everything all at once. I want to parse things out and say, “Now is a happy time and now is a sad time,” but my life isn’t like that. It’s messy and chaotic and unpredictable. As I contemplate how to end this post, I can see my friend with a big smile on his face saying, “Don’t worry, it’s fine,” as in, I don’t have to make sense of it all, I don’t have to try to change life or circumstances. I can be here, in the moment, accepting everything.
I dream of a world where we understand life is messy, chaotic, and unpredictable — not only in terms of circumstances but also in emotions. A world where we realize the yin yang is an excellent portrayal of our experiences. A world where we understand that oftentimes joy is paired with sorrow and vice versa.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
This Valentine’s Day marks 10 years since I moved to California. I can’t believe it’s been that long – five years I could believe, but 10? That’s almost a third of my life. I’m grateful I made the decision to move here, I’m grateful for my life here, my friends here, my community here, but also I’m sad.
I’m not sad about the decision, because like I said, I love California. California is home. I’m sad I’m not 23 anymore. I don’t want to go back in time and relive 23 because I was scared, anxious, and insecure much of the time, but in other ways I miss who I was. I miss how excited I felt, how enthusiastic I was. I miss the newness of the world around me. I know I’m still young and I’ll still experience new things, but now I have a point of reference. When I travel to new countries, they remind me of other countries. When I try a new restaurant, it reminds me of another restaurant. As I get older, even new things are slightly familiar.
I feel grateful and I feel sad. Photo by Sweet Ice Cream Photography on Unsplash.
Really what’s happening here is I’m grieving the old me. Celebrating my anniversary reminds me of who I used to be and who I am now. The gap is large, in a good way, but it’s still a gap. Through my work in therapy, I’m learning it’s important to grieve for my old selves. To feel a sense of loss for the person I once was and can no longer be. The sadness exists and doesn’t go away through any rationalization on my part, nor any amount of looking on the bright side. Mourning the old me reminds me of a quote from my spiritual teacher.
He said, “Death is nothing but change. A 5-year-old child is transformed in due course into a 15-year-old boy. In 10 years, the child becomes the boy. Thereafter, you will never be able to find the body of the 5-year-old child. So the child’s body has certainly died.” He then goes on to mention the boy growing into a man, and then hitting middle age, then old age, until he finally dies and says, “The rest of the changes we do not call death; but in fact, all the changes qualify as death.”
That means my 23-year-old died and it’s important for me to honor and say goodbye to her, just as it’s important for me to honor and say goodbye to other people when they die. And that’s what it feels like today, that I’m saying goodbye to the 23-year-old me. I’m remembering what I liked about her and what I disliked, and I feel sad. A little voice in my head is saying, “It’s almost Valentine’s Day! You should be writing about love and happy things! No one wants to read a depressing post!” That may be true, but also in multiple conversations with people they told me they felt like they had to be happy and upbeat in order to talk with me and I said, “No you don’t. You get to be whoever you are. I don’t mind if you’re happy or sad. Either way is fine by me,” and I meant it. And I mean it for me, too.
As we approach Valentine’s Day, I hope you will also let yourself feel sad if sadness arises. I hope that you will grieve old selves and old loves if that bubbles up. I also hope you know that doesn’t diminish the good things in your life, or take away how grateful you are for changes. All changes are deaths and all deaths need mourning.
I dream of a world where we mourn our losses. A world where we let ourselves feel how we feel with love and acceptance. A world where we recognize we can feel sad about the past and grateful for the present at the same time.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.