Loss...

Over the past week I have had a chance to chat with a couple of friends that I have not had a chance to connect with in a while. I almost had the chance to chat with a couple of other friends that I have not seen in a while; unfortunately our schedules didn’t allow it…

Of the friends I did not have a chance to connect with, one was a former college roommate, and the other one of my best friends from college, who was also my best man when I got married. They called me to let me know they were coming through Abilene and wanted to see if we could catch up. Their calls got me thinking about our time in college. We were young, we were ambitious, we thought we were going to turn the world upside down. I have not exactly turned the world upside down, but I have been able to do a few things I never thought I would be doing. But still, for a moment or two I could feel the loss of time, the loss of opportunities, dreams, etc. that I will never get back.

Of the friends that I did get to connect with, one was a former boss, and the other a friend who I worked with at a church in Lubbock. I was able to chat with my former boss on the phone for almost an hour. He was really more than a boss; he was another father figure in my life. After our conversation I thought a lot about the many things I was able to be a part of while working with him. But at the same time I also thought about many of the things I was not able to be a part of when I left working for him.

I was able to sit and talk with my friend and former coworker after a long day of meetings in Lubbock. We talked about our kids and our wives. We talked a little about our jobs. He made fun of me because I still cannot figure out all the features of my laptop and iphone. As I headed home from Lubbock I thought about our work together. There were things we dreamed of but never got to accomplish, there were also experiences we never expected that we were privileged to be a part of. But there were many thoughts that hauntingly reappeared reminding me of so many things that never got traction.

I wonder if those who go through a mid-life crisis have some of the same feelings I have had as I reminisced about my friends and our lives together. It really seems I should have done more in my life by now. I have some feelings of anxiousness, sadness, loss that so many things I want to accomplish are no where close to becoming a reality. I think too often life just moves on and we never acknowledge we have experienced a loss. We rarely take the time to mourn, to grieve the woulda, coulda, shoulda’s… This may be because we do not know how to grieve healthily. Too many of us have been raised to stuff our stuff deep down inside, forgetting that our stuff will come out one day and it is usually not very pretty when it does…

We all experience loss. At some time we will disconnect from a friend. At other times it is a loss of a dream or possibilities, or the loss of getting to continue to make our own decisions, etc. We need to acknowledge our losses, we need to grieve them in a constructive way. We also need to remember that of the many things we have lost, not been able to complete or accomplish, there are probably that many if not more things we have to celebrate being a part of, rejoicing that we were a part of something or many something’s we never thought possible.