Pondering: Overcoming loss

Pondering with a purpose is a weekly meme by writer Brenda Youngerman and I have decided to give it a go. I am much better with pictures than with words and I am not sure, I will contribute every week, but I will try.

This week’s prompt is: Overcoming loss

How do you do it? Have you done it? Do you have any advice for others?

Now this could be a…

Loss of Innocence
Loss of Dignity
Loss of Privacy
Loss of a loved one
Loss of purpose

You get the idea…..

 

When I think about loss in my life there are three instances that instantly come to mind. In chronological order: My second dog’s death, my dad dying of cancer and my world traveled cat of old age. There were, of course, other family members, too, but these were the ones that touched me the most.

Our first dog died when I was too young. But the second one I practically grew up with. After 14  years when he had reached the end of his life span, I moved from being a teenager to adulthood. How did I cope with it or overcome it? The same most everybody in our family does. Pulling myself together, crying by myself in my room, showing a solemn face to the world. Alone, by myself, not wanting to add to the burden of others. Not showing an emotion or that I am vulnerable, because I was strong. Much later I learned that my ‘strong show’ was (one of) the reason(s) we did not get another dog. So much for that.

When my dad passed away I was living and working in Australia. I had just gotten up and taken a shower, when I got the call in the morning on Queen’s Birthday, a public holiday. I was alone, and there was no time to mourn now! I had to make arrangements how to get back to Germany as quickly as possible. Remember it was a holiday. But working for a forwarder had its advantages. Within only a couple of hours I was on a flight from Melbourne to Sydney and from there to Frankfurt, where I was picked up by my brother in law. On the flight I obviously had lots of time to think and grieve. Alone. Once home, I was staying with my mom, there were lots of things to do, to take care of, enabling me again to not show, but keep my emotions to myself, mostly. A couple of weeks fast forward, the funeral, lots of organizing  behind us, I flew back to my life in Australia. Alone again.

Cassie, my world traveled cat, came into my life in Australia, as did Ute. For a little over a year, we all shared a house in Melbourne. Suddenly I was not by myself, alone, anymore. What a difference! It changed me in many ways, but not in the way I grieve. Because when Cassie died at the beginning of this year, David was at work, I still grieved and cried alone. By the time he got home at night, I was calm again and only showed a few tears.

So, the moral of my story is: Overcoming loss is a very personal matter. It depends very much on your own personality, how introvert or extrovert you are, and on your upbringing or conditioning as a child. In our family emotions or rather showing emotions was somewhat weird. e.g. Hugging to greet somebody? No way! These days this seems to me very silly. Through my travels and getting to know so many different people from different countries I learned that it is o.k. to show emotions. But does it mean that I’d overcome loss differently today? I don’t think so. I am still not the most emotional person on Earth and some things are just too personal to share. But that is just me and everybody is different and overcomes loss differently 🙂

Why I am linking this post to letter ‘E’ of our Alphabe- Thursday? Because these three family members will be in my heart and remembered for eternity. Love you all: Dad + Cassie + Flax!

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This is my contribution today Pondering with a purpose by Brenda Youngerman and to round 6 of Alphabe- Thursday hosted by Jenny Matlock. If you have a moment please visit her website and check out other ‘student’s’ work and her ‘terrific tangents’.

 

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