As I entered a meeting recently, I got talking with the host who reflected with me a moment in their life where life stood still; a terrifying bushfire reality where people and property losses were a clear and present danger. The moment came and fortunately went in a matter of minutes, everything unscathed. Everything was at the mercy of that moment, people’s survival, and entire properties.
Just as that particular moment stood still, so did the moment of remembrance, as we just stared at each other. Stuck in the moment.
Moments like these take our breath away. They leave us unequivocally vulnerable. We realise just how small we truly are.
Such moments put all of life into better perspective.
One of those moments for us was preparing to meet our deceased son. Like many parents who’ve had stillborn children, there might be a few moments or a few hours where the numbness of loss is wrestled with, amid the utter impossibility of reconciling such a moment.
Yet what must be wrestled with, with some resolution I might add, is the meeting with the little one. I’m not sure there’s a more bittersweet moment than meeting the one you’ve been desperate to meet but meeting them in the most devastating way.
It’s an example of a moment that leaves an indelible reminder on your soul. We kind of asked ourselves if we had what it took to endure a moment nothing in life prepares you for.
Like the diagnosis of your disabled child, or your scammed of your life savings, the sudden death of a loved one, or your betrayed in a way you could never see coming.
Not all moments are equal, but many moments are just simply earth shattering.
As we reflect over our lives, those of us who have endured some of these moments that were too momentous to comprehend have had the eyes of our hearts opened.
The traumas we’ve endured have not so much damaged us as they’re awakened us to the suffering possible in this life. There’s nothing quite like meeting someone who’s been to your kind of hell and back, like those who’ve been through divorce, child loss, the loss of a partner, the loss of a parent, the loss of a dream or a living, etc. Instantly there’s connection.
Enduring a moment that nothing in life prepares you for is but a preparation for the rest of life in and of itself. We’d not wish that sense of inner panic that can’t go anywhere on our worst enemy.
We survive those moments of horrific heart terror because we don’t have an option but to endure them. It’s a trauma and yet the trauma is but part of the overall assignment of recovery because the grief is horrendous.
But there is something we gained in meeting our son, Nathanael. The fact that he was no longer alive didn’t dim our love for him one iota. We soaked up each second we had with him before his funeral. Every second was a gift because time was finite.
Many of those moments involved pain that nothing in life could prepare us for, and yet each of those moments were beautiful in their own right, as much because we only had a certain time.
Moments that nothing in life prepares us for, where there is no escape but to endure them, once endured, are a huge part of the broadening of our life experience, and we’re deepened and made more mature as a result, and more capable of enduring future grief.
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