the space. . .

The philosopher Heidegger posited that dying was perhaps a person's most authentic and subjective act. All other actions, he would suggest, are always colored by the presence of the other. In death, Heidegger argued, one is at last doing one thing completely by oneself. Death, after all, is intensely personal, solitary, and completely individual.

But what of the living? What of those of us that are left behind?

Much has been said about death and grieving. In my own life, I've heard phrases like, "(s)he's at peace," "(s)he's in a better place," "god has a plan," and so on ad infinitum/nauseuam. . . None of those phrases has ever done very much for me. . . Grief, after all, is less about feeling relief for the deceased, than it is about the experience of a deep and abiding psychic wound. Grief, is about feeling the space open up in oneself that had at one time been filled with the departed.

In St. Augustine's opus, The Confessions, he describes a friend as, ". . .one with whom one feels as if there is but one soul, and two bodies. . . " He writes this passage as he is grieving the loss of one of his closest friends. Augustine's argument can be further extended to suggest that the loss of a friend is the loss of a part of one's own being.

The trouble comes when one considers Augustine's thought in concert with Heidegger's. The death of an other is exactly that. Something done by an other person, and therefore, unshareable. In so many ways, death marks a fracture between an individual and those with whom they shared their souls. More than that, death is also a violent and shocking attack on the intersection between those two souls. Mourning, thus, happens on two equally painful planes. . . The loss of the other, and the loss of oneself. . .

Lately, I've found myself revisiting some of the losses that I've experienced. . .and I have come up with what is a grossly unsatisfying answer. . . and have also decided that no answer could ever be satisfying enough. I've decided that I will both rile against the space that's left behind by loss, and celebrate it at the same time. There is no authentic way of achieving "closure" (another meaningless cliche if you ask me. . .).

The space, I've decided, is what remains of the people I've lost. . . and where my memories of them continue to live. The space is at the same time rich and empty, comforting and tormenting, and as beautiful as it is hideous.

Dissatisfying, to be sure, but like so many things it is imperfection and contradiction that mark the human condition. And I must reluctantly admit. . . I wouldn't have it any other way.


--peace