Death and Letting Go

Miss Me But Let Me Go

"When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom-filled room.
Why cry for a soul set free?

Miss me a little--but not too long
And not with your head bowed low.
Remember the love that we once shared,
Miss me--but let me go.

For this is a journey that we all must take
And each must go alone.
It's all a part of the Master's plan,
A step on the road to home.

When you are lonely and sick of heart
Go to the friends we know
And bury your sorrows in doing good deeds.
Miss Me--But Let me Go!"

I was at a friend's house the other day, and the person was on the other side of grief from me, so I could get a good look at it. I think friends are good at showing you yourself if you care to look at it that way.

I have grief, lots of grief. I sometimes feel like I have "processed" all the grief and then more layers show up underneath the ones I cried out. But I saw a friend stuck in grief and unable to move on, and this made me think how I was appearing to others with my grief. Is it like watching a dinosaur stuck in a tar pit? Or is it like sentimentality? Or is it the summing up of a life and its affect on those around it?

I wanted to say to my friend, don't let ghosts run your life. And yet there is always this empty chair, this empty feeling in my arms, this sense of milestones lost and a presence felt that never goes away from the place my baby daughter left when she died of cancer as a toddler.

Letting go means you are free to "move on" whatever that really means. To live your life more for yourself again, than when the other person needed to be accommodated and considered and loved. But it was that very accommodation, that giving of love, that gave me so much. Taught me to be what I am, and shaped me. I don't need the training wheels of maturity anymore. The learning what it is to live as much for others as for yourself. But going with out the training wheels requires emotional balance. A centeredness, that doesn't require the compass of another's immediate needs/wants/desires to show me how to have compassion and awareness of the other sentience around me.

I am sure that's what my daughter would have wanted, and my friend's mother would want for her, if she could see past her pain. I want to walk that road for her, but it is a road to walk alone, yet we all are on it together, just at different points along it, I can see her along the path at a distance but she has to take each step herself, like I did, and still have to.