On Loss

When I was a little girl, I had the most fantastic bicycle. Perhaps its magical entry into my life -- found parked under the Christmas tree one thrilling December morning -- marked its inevitable role as a cherished and often-remembered part of my childhood. It was pink. And it had a banana seat. And a little white basket with plastic pink & yellow daisies on the front. And sparkling streamers from the ends of the handlebars. -- And my mother had also hung a small horse-shaped Christmas tree ornament from one handlebar, fond as I was of horses at that age.

I loved that bike. In truth, I thought I was pretty hot shit, riding around the neighborhood on my brand new bike. (My dad tended to be thrifty, so almost all our toys were secondhand: pogo sticks with broken springs, jigsaw puzzles that were missing pieces.) 

But, here's the thing: I don't remember what ever happened to that bike. I have to imagine I outgrew it. But it's equally likely it got broken somehow. Or maybe one of my teenage brothers hocked it for some weed (not an implausible scenario).

And also, I don't really remember that it was pink. I think it was pink. I mean, I'm pretty sure. But I can't swear to it. Or, honestly, the banana seat, either. Maybe that was a later bike. 

But I loved that bike. It's safe to say I probably loved that bike then as much as I love my dogs now, which is to say, a lot. Like "I'd throw myself in front of a car to save it" a lot. And, yet, I have no recollection of how or when that bike left my life, or even clear memories regarding specific details about it.

Which leads me to contemplate how the mind processes loss. One moment you have something, and the next you don't. Loss can impact our lives in an infinite number of ways: death, divorce, illness, breach of trust, friends moving away, betrayal, injury, … The list goes on.

At some point, after loss, we must each reach a point where we "move on." It's been almost a year since my divorce, and I'm still not sure what that means, to move on.

There is, of course, action. The actions of moving through life and completing the necessary movements to be perceived by others as a sane and functional human being: grooming, dressing, eating, paying bills. Perhaps even conversing with friends and coworkers. 

A more personal level of action might be one we take in our own private lives: trying to sort the memories (and sometimes actual physical objects) which remind of what we have lost. The amputee who throws away all their left shoes, for instance. Or in my case, all the photos of my married years being packed away for another less vulnerable time -- sometime, in the future. Supposedly.

Maybe it depends on the way you lose a thing that determines (at least in part) how you recover, what your timeline looks like. My parents were sick with Alzheimer's for years before they died from it. My father's death was preceded by several months of illness which our family elected not to treat surgically, as he'd long been unresponsive by that time. In the end, his death was a blessing, and though he is still missed, these four years later, "getting over" his death wasn't nearly as difficult as accepting the previous losses of his intelligence, his wit, his personality. 

My divorce, on the other hand, was abrupt. I was informed in one thirty-four word sentence that my ex-husband was finished with our marriage, when I'd had no advance notification that he was even unhappy. Our marriage was like a murderer accused and convicted, with "no priors."

And so it's taken some time. To "move on." But I finally feel this loss morphing into something that "just was." Not unlike my childhood bicycle, it seems no amount of backward glancing serves to further clarify or explain what happened to it. And, like my bicycle, I have some theories, ideas, recollections --  some more plausible than others. But there's little to no evidence to support these ideas, only the unreliability of memory, distorted by personal perception.

There's a sadness of its own in letting something go. A guilt in "moving on," as if the thing lost never had the value attributed to it in the first place. It seems strange to have a numbness in a place in my heart, in my brain, which previously held buckets & buckets of love and concern and intimacy and joy and friendship … and love. 

Twenty years ago, I had surgery on my knee, and there's still a spot just below the kneecap that has no feeling. The doctor explained the nerve had been severed and might never grow back. It's a small area, maybe a half-inch diameter, but no matter how hard I poke it, I feel nothing. 

Maybe loss is like that: scar tissue. The inability of certain sensations to ever regenerate, leaving behind a persistent "dead spot." And, like that scar tissue, I'm certain if I probed hard & deep enough, I could find pain there again, or maybe create some where none even previously existed. But where's the good in that?