You Were Definitely Here
A different way to feel about the absence after loss
Does this ever happen to you?
You’re driving through an old neighborhood, perhaps where you used to live with your departed person, and an extreme sense of melancholy overwhelms you.
You can’t help but think, “His feet once touched the ground here.”
It happens to me all the time when I pass through different areas in the city.
Places such as train stations where I know my son has stood many times. Or the home where he was born three decades ago. The skateboard park where he broke his arm at age 17.
Recently my mother and I went for brunch at a familiar restaurant. The hostess sat us in the exact same booth where I’ve had lunch with both my late son AND a long-time friend who has also passed on.
It’s a strange sensation.
I especially feel it when I pass by the apartment building where my late grandmother lived for thirty-some years. It almost feels illegal that a random stranger moved into her home where an entire generation of us spent a significant amount of time eating cinnamon buns.
I bet that apartment still smells like her perfume.
Sometimes my contemplative nature narrows to the point where I can’t imagine ever replacing my couch because my son has sat on it.
And sometimes I say out loud, “You were right here.”
Remember when I wrote about the random stranger who died in his apartment a few weeks ago? Since then, a flurry of restoration and renovation activity has been going on inside. I see it every time I leave my building.
Soon enough, a new tenant or owner will live there with no knowledge of the previous tenant.
It’s a weird thought, right?
Nearly everywhere in the world you could go, someone who was once alive has walked there, lived there, sat there, looked at what you’re looking at, or touched what you’re touching.
If we think about loss on a global scale, it kind of makes it a collective experience. And it oddly makes it a touch more bearable.
Millions have gone before us and millions will go after us, but we were all definitely here.
Nobody has a magic pill to minimize the pain you might feel while grieving but if we can widen our scope and expand our minds, it can help minimize the feeling of isolation.
Have you ever had fleeting thoughts of, “You were right here”?
If so, have you ever paused to think of who else in the world has been right there?
On the topic of “the bigger picture,” you may have missed this post:
In the house Susan and I bought, we had a room with a fireplace. But because we were both so engaged with the world of spirit, we called it, The Psychic Room. Its where we did the morning sage burn, kept our cards, and our pendulums. The couch that we sat on in that room we called the Psychic Couch.
Here in this house, the psychic couch is where Susan was sitting when she died. I thought I wouldn't be able to sit there anymore. But it turns out, sitting there brings much comfort, and my kitties will sometimes all sit there with me. I do think her spirit is still here, and my cat friends like that.
It is rather awe-inspiring — and as you say, oddly comforting — to think of all the many, many people who have "been right here" in the space I now occupy. It's a reminder that we're all only here temporarily, but while we are, we are as "here" as anyone.