I'm sorry for your loss.

[The_jackalope]

I'm thinking a lot these days about the phrase "I'm sorry for your loss." People say it for a variety of reasons. They may actually feel sorry; they may say it because they think I expect it from them; it may be a reflex programmed way back in childhood, or it may be a way of safely acknowledging an uncomfortable event. All these reasons are perfectly acceptable, and I'm not going to bitch about politeness or caring.

What has interested me in the week since Kathy died is how my inner response to that phrase has evolved. While my outside voice still says things like, "Thank you, that's very kind," my inside voice is now saying something completely different. It says something like this:

Loss? What loss? Who got lost, and where would they have gone? Kathy wasn't her body. She wasn't even her mind, or her emotions. Kath was always a spirit, whatever that means. For a while the "spirit formerly known as Kathy" was focused in a physical body, now it is defocused into the universe - the eternal Here, the eternal Now. As Seth put it, she is now "an entity no longer focused in physical reality." That emphatically does not mean that she's "gone."

I don't even think "Oh, she lives on in our memories and in our hearts" - though that is true to some extent. What is far more true is that she lives on forever in everything. Whenever I take a photograph, I'm photographing her. When I walk down the street, I am surrounded by her. Well, that can't be exactly true, can it? "Surrounded by" implies that I am still somehow separate from her - she's outside, I'm inside. But that's just a culturally reinforced illusion. If she is now everything, then she must be me as well. And she is.

That's how I perceive her; that's my understanding of what happened. This is why there has been no sorrow in my heart. At first there was a sense of dislocation, because it was a fairly major change for all concerned. But sadness? No. She was happy to leave, even eager. She had wanted to go home for many years, and finally she could. Love means wanting for your beloved what they want for themselves. This is why I feel joy and celebration rather than sorrow. She got what she most desired.

But, "Thank you, that's very kind" works a little more smoothly most of the time. People at work are less likely to look at me sideways and wonder what planet I'm from. Luckily, you folks are not them, and we can sometimes tell each other our truth.

Thanks for listening.