“This is so surreal.”
“It hardly seems real.”
“I can’t believe s/he is gone.”
It’s hard to wrap our heads around the death of someone we love. They are here one moment and irrevocably gone the next. We can’t make sense of it:
Here then Gone.
Here then Gone.
Alive then Dead.
It’s nature’s way, yet when happens it can feel horrifically unnatural.
Especially if our loved one was snatched away as the result of a tragic accident or heinous crime. But the harrowing permanence of death can be equally unfathomable after a long illness or decline, too.
The person we loved one is gone and it’s hard to believe it. We say to each other, this is surreal.
What’s interesting is that etymologically, surreal doesn’t mean “not real” it means “over, above, or on top of real.” Perhaps no coincidence that people are said to be “surviving” the death of their loved ones—it’s the same prefix.
I think the key to this sense of the surreal is the phenomenon of the spirit. Sometimes it’s the vital spirit of the person — “She was so alive, such a presence—how can she be dead?” — or how greatly their spirit affected our hearts and lives.
Some say our difficulty comprehending the permanent departure of a loved one is because the spirit of that person is still so close. Does this mean their spirit floating around? Or is our mind’s eye so overflowing with thoughts and memories of the departed that they feel in a way, closer than ever before?
Anyone who’s seen the dead body of a loved one knows that person is so not there any more. The spirit that enlivened them is gone. Yet it can still be hard to reconcile the empty shell of the body with that fact that your loved one is not here any more.
“She’ll be with you in spirit.”
“You can keep his spirit alive.”
Spirit is real. It means different things to different people at different times, but it is, at the very least, as real as life force itself. Yet it is not limited by the breath and heartbeats that animate our earthly bodies.
No need to believe in Heaven or agree with someone else’s vision of life after death.
But can’t we all agree that spirit—human and yet immortal—is undeniable?
#griefislove #sayinggoodbyesucks #spiritisreal #spiritshavinganaturalexperience #deathissurreal