Lessons Learned by Katherine Rose

Lesson #1:

During those first few moments (which might be minutes, hours, or days) of being thrown into the liminal space, you will feel as though the world should stop, and yet it continues. You will feel unable to cope, as though you are lacking the tools necessary for survival in this new world. You may find some comfort in knowing this is normal. When the floor drops out from under you, you are supposed to feel shock. You are in a foreign land. Allow it to be.

Lesson #2:

The most that you will ever know of a person is about 10 or 15 percent. When they die, you will see sides of them you never knew existed. You will learn all sorts of new information—proof that your dead brother, your dead spouse, your dead friend, or your dead child had dimensions to their personality that you never knew existed.

You will come to learn that you cannot put a person inside a box. People are too divergent, too unconstrained to be put inside a box. Try as you might, you cannot hold all of the pieces of a person in one place. They will spill out. Just when you think you have captured a person, you will notice something on the other side of the room that does not fit.

Human beings are mysterious and open for interpretation. They shift, they grow, they break. They say things they do not mean. They don’t say things they wish they said. Sometimes they hide, sometimes they put on a brave face. Those of us on the receiving end never really know for sure what is real, what is amplified, and what is hidden. There are too many variables.

The best we can do, then, is to allow the questions to remain unanswered, and to instead, make our own meaning. Absent answers to our questions, we have to interpret the past—whatever it is—in the way that best allows us to live powerfully and joyfully in the present and in the future. Since we cannot know for certain, we must do the best we can.

Lesson #3:

We all get dropped to our knees at some point by something unexpected. It is part of the human condition. Your brother dies. You lose your job. Your husband cheats on you. This is just life. Commit to figuring it out. Commit to taking this life, this life that no longer makes sense, and moving to a new place so that life makes sense again. Until you get there, it’s going to feel awkward and surreal. Let it, and commit to rolling with it.

Lesson #4:

When someone you love dies, your old self dies, too. You are no longer a sibling or a mother of son or someone’s girlfriend. The person you once were? That’s not you anymore. Your identity is different.

From my vantage point, though, there are only two ways this new person can manifest. You either become a person who rises above death, or you become a person who lets it rule your life. There are good days and bad days, either way, but it seems to me that in the end, that there is no in between. You either decide that you are going to reach for happiness, love, and compassion in ways that work, or you decide that you are going to be wrapped up in grief, lashing out, and chaotic, reaching for happiness through external things that provide instant gratification, like drugs, which never really end up working in the end.

If you become the person who rises above death, something magical happens: You start to see beauty where you did not notice it before. You find compassion in your own self where it was once absent. You learn what true friendships look like. You become thankful for the small wonders you would have earlier overlooked. And as you weed your way through new emotions, you find strength that you did not know you were capable of having. Your pain paves the way for tremendous appreciation. What you have lost gives a voice to what you have and what you can be. You begin to look at the moments as small treasures. You pay attention to them, and you consider how you can give your best self to every moment.

Lesson #5:

Your transition out of the liminal space begins when you are able to envision a future that exists without your deceased loved one.

To get there, you must give yourself permission to take a step, and then another step. When you can eagerly await Thanksgiving celebrations, when you are excited about a wedding, when you can begin to make plans for your future, you are beginning your journey out of the liminal space.

Have you started to take those steps? Is it too much to ask to take just one? I think that it is not. Just as death is part of life, so too is joy. So is wild abandon. So is ecstasy.

How do you take it? This journey across the bridge—this first step? The journey exists inside of you. It begins when you give yourself permission to feel better, to accept your imperfections, to forgive the flaws in others, and to reach for the moments.

Lesson #6:

People will tell you to look for the silver linings, but the silver linings cannot be found; they do not really exist. They are created. You cannot find them until you decide to see a future that allows your sorrow to co-exist with joy. When your eyes are closed, you will never see the happiness, love, and even deep-belly laughter waiting for you, until you recognize that these emotions can arise in the presence of sadness.

Are you open to a future of possibilities? Try this: Expect the universe to deliver something small and wonderful. Ask her for it. Test her. Ask her for love, for joy. Ask her to create those conditions for a surprising side-aching fit of laughter. And then see what she gives you.

Lesson #7:

If you take stock of the people you know who have lost loved ones, you’ll come to realize that most people deal with grief in one of three ways: with matter-of-fact reason, religion, or spirituality.

None of these are right or wrong. My dad and I, for instance, have gone down two different paths, but we support each other and don’t mess with each other’s beliefs. My thought is that you should use whatever moves you through the liminal space faster. Can you use religion, spirituality, or reason to reach happiness? To get better?

Then use it.

Look for ways to be happy, even if other people think you are doing it “wrong.” What works for you might not work for other people. But if it gives you a sliver of hope, then use it, and stop worrying about what other people say you should do. Do not worry about the people who argue with you, or who tell you that you are grieving wrong, or even who think you have gone over the deep edge.

Lesson #8:

We have a tendency to compare pain—to say that our pain is more than someone else’s pain, or that our pain is less than someone else’s pain, and that we should therefore be grateful for what we do have.

Yet, comparing pain prevents us from learning the lessons from our pain. It matters not how great our pain ranks on the scales of pain. It matters that we allow our pain to teach us lessons.

Your pain is carrying with it information. If you listen closely, it will share some of life’s most beautiful secrets. It is through your deeper pain that you will find deeper compassion. It is through your sadness that you can explore the path toward joy. You will find yourself on long, dark walks, feeling broken and defeated, when you stumble across a quiet mountain lake. You will be folded in sorrow, only to find yourself being enveloped in love. You will find that pain can be your companion as you let grief release your joy. The lessons are waiting for you, asking you to grow to be old and wise, reminding you of this …

You are alive.

Lesson #9:

There is no beating grief. There is no getting over it. Yet, the beauty of grief is that it stretches your emotional bandwidth. Joy, happiness, love, compassion: The extent to which you can feel them is directly proportional to the amount of pain, grief, sadness, and devastation you have felt. 

While there is no beating grief, there is leveraging grief so that it increases your joy. When you do this, you see that your grief is beautiful. Embrace it.