A cosh is simply a weapon, yet, for some it may feel as though this grief is a thing that is keeping us from being ourselves. The self that we knew before we lost someone dear. That had a place, a sense of purpose in the human that we have lost. That person was a rudder to steer our lives by and is nolonger a physical guidence.
Our son was a nurtured part of who I was. His mum who birthed him, breast fed him, just as I did with my first born, his older sister. Children become a purpose when they enter ones life. My purpose to raise them as best I could. To see them safely through their lives for as long as possible. For the rest of my life. Certainly not seeing that it would simply be for the length of his. To wipe snot from the nose, dry their eyes. Laugh with them at simple sunbeams and butterflies.
Even with our parents as they age, we take on a purpose to care for them as they once tried to care for us. To ease their way through to the end.
Perhaps that’s where the depression can take hold. Losing our purpose, to feel that we have failed in our duties to love and protect. To feel that the void caused by their leaving, their travelling on to new beginnings is a void in our reason for living. As darker spaces tend to do, they draw us in. Become a vortex, a spiral that feels too strong to step away from. Yet step away we must. The platitudes of ‘they wouldn’t want to see us like this’, that we are ‘not carrying on as they would want’, don’t feel terribly helpful in the depths of pain and sadness. Yet, it is true. There us not to be a denying of the loss, of the hurt and even of the loss of purpose. They were only part of life’s purpose. Granted possibly a huge part for their lifetime and ones own. As an infant, the child is all consuming. Yet as Gavin grew and learnt, my purpose as mum went from doing everything to nurture his survival reduced and evolved. A letting him become his own person, to make his own choices. Hopefully secure in that I would always love and support his choices. That’s where ’empty nest syndrome’ may cause depression, because they are no longer a sole purpose. There is our own life to be filled with other human shaped purposes, our soul purposes to live as best we can with what we have of our own self being. So yes, I can understand that depression fits into the stages of grief, but did I feel that? In honesty and with hind sight? No. I had already shifted purpose to a supporting role. I was already letting go, letting him lead his life. I was a smaller part of his life than I had been when he was a child.
HelenzArt-life-musings 