Tag: loss

All For Naught

We toiled away in the hot sun.

Our task was to build a sandcastle. And as the salty air clung to our skin and the sea breeze lingered, my sister and I were hard at work.

We would fill buckets with coarse sand. Then, we’d return to the build site and invert the buckets, molding that packed sand into a series of turrets and exterior walls.

It was an amateur operation, to be sure. But for a couple of kids under the age of 8, it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of.

My father watched us intently. He was the one who had given us our marching orders, and he was also overseeing the construction.

My father was fully qualified for the job. He didn’t have an engineering degree. But he did have a habit of fixing sink drains and rehanging picture frames whenever we visited friends and family.

The hosts wouldn’t ask my father to fix these issues. Instead, he’d insist on doing so. For it ate at him to see something askew.

Given his background, my father wasn’t going to let his kids build some flimsy sandcastle. So, when he instructed us to build a moat around the castle, we went all in. It wasn’t long before the modest castle was surrounded by a ditch so wide, it might as well have been a Bayou.

When it was complete, I stood and admired our masterpiece.

This creation will endure, I thought. It will still be standing tomorrow.

But as I envisioned all this, I felt seawater crash into my legs.

A rouge wave had invaded our moat. And just like that, our castle was gone.

My experience on that day was not unique.

Beachgoing kids the world over have similar stories to tell. Heck, the Ocean Swallows Sandcastle tale is practically a rite of passage for anyone who’s spent their summers under a sea breeze.

I was stunned at first, but I quickly got over the ordeal. There were plenty of other beach activities to take part in.

And yet, I’ve never quite forgotten the experience. Or what it stood for.

As I saw my sand creation wash away, I learned firsthand that there is no way to guard against chance. We can follow all the right procedures and still have our creations swiped from us. Our hard work can be all for naught.

That’s a difficult pill to swallow for anyone. But as we get older, the gut punch feels especially poignant.

After all, the longer the road back, the harder it is to reboot.

Fall seven times. Stand up eight.

This is an old Japanese proverb. One that Converse turned into a shoe commercial featuring basketball superstar Dwyane Wade.

This proverb resonates because it’s relatable. Many of us have been knocked down in our lives. But we’ve still found a way to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep going.

Yes, resilience is a hallmark of American culture. We root for the underdogs, embrace adversity and openly share the challenges we overcome.

I’m not sure whether this zeal comes from our rugged past or our love of narrative. Either way, most American success stories seem to come in the face of resistance.

Still, these stories gloss over a critical detail. The fall we endure is relatively minor, while the climb from the depths is more sustained.

This narrative pattern fits with literary tradition. As >Kurt Vonnegut once said, people want to see the hero go from average to well above average.

We can stomach the idea of our hero falling into a hole. That stumble is just a character-building detour on our way to glory.

But the concept of a hero plummeting off a cliff? The prospect of building something up just to lose it all? That makes us queasy.

And yet, that’s the scenario we all too often face.

Like many writers, I am an introvert.

I once took an assessment for my job. On it, I scored 96 out of 100 for introversion. It was a mark that would make a hermit blush.

I embrace solitude. I am not afraid of silence.

Yet, my independent streak has its limits. I’ve lived more than a thousand miles away from my family for my entire adult life. And throughout that time, I’ve come to recognize how important it is to rely on others.

So, I’ve embraced the world beyond my door. I’ve expanded my circle of influence, making friends and gaining connections along the way. And I’ve taken some volunteer leadership positions — including the local chapter presidency for my alma mater.

I fortified my castle, stepping well out of my comfort zone to build a life the younger me would have found unfathomable. I was reaching my pinnacle. I had it all.

And then, it was taken away.

Much like that rouge wave at the beach, a deadly virus came out of nowhere to disrupt reality. It forced all of us to cut off social interactions, cancel events and avoid travel.

The initial shock proved tolerable. But as weeks turned into months, I started to see all the progress I’d made over a decade washed away.

Suddenly, I was fighting to hang on to friendships. I was parting with time-honored traditions. And I was losing my touch as a leader.

The virus hadn’t taken my life or my livelihood. But it had taken nearly everything else.

All the progress I had made over years was now all for naught.

It can be hard to reckon with the truth. To see all you’ve built dropped and scattered like the aftermath of a Jenga game.

And yet, this is the situation I found myself in, under the shadow of the virus.

I wasn’t alone.

Many of us have had something ripped from us in this ordeal. Some have lost a way of life or a sense of community. Others have lost loved ones or careers.

Coming to terms with such a loss is challenging enough. But we must also face the prospect of moving forward. Of starting that long climb back, without time and energy on our side.

We must consider all that progress that was stripped from us. Was all that effort worthwhile? Is heartbreak inevitable?

These are tough questions to face. But face them we must.

I don’t have all the answers. Heck, I am struggling with this as much as anyone.

And yet, I am hopeful.

I am hopeful that my will to plow forward will carry me. I am hopeful my desire to build from the ruins will endure. And I am hopeful that chance will be on my side this time.

Maybe hope is enough to sustain us. Maybe not. But I’m counting on it, as much as anyone.

For without hope, all is truly for naught. And that’s a state of mind we can all do without.

Things We’ve Lost

I got the call early in the morning some years ago.

It was a beautiful February day in Dallas, and I was at work. I stepped outside in the cool, crisp air to answer the phone, watching the sunlight illuminate the trees across the parking lot.

But the call did not match the resplendent mood of the morning. For my grandfather had passed away.

Now, this news was not exactly a surprise. My grandfather had just turned 89 years old, and his health had been deteriorating for weeks. He had also suffered a stroke several years prior — a stroke that took away his wit, his intellect and much of his personality.

With all this in mind, word of my grandfather’s passing seemed to more the tail-end of an epilogue than a stunning break with normalcy.

And so, I acted accordingly. I went back into the office, and walked over to the Human Resource manager’s office. I calmly explained what had happened. Then, I requested bereavement leave, asking to keep the reason for my impending absence secret from the rest of the company.

That bit of bureaucracy handled, I returned to my desk and got back to work.

Several days later, I sat at a gate at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, waiting to board a flight headed halfway across the country.

All around me, there were business professionals returning home from on-site meetings and conferences. This was nothing out of the ordinary for a midweek flight — those generally tend to be business-heavy, and Dallas is a corporate hub. Yet, I felt strangely out of place among these professionals, knowing that I’d abandoned my job responsibilities for the rest of the week.

As I boarded the flight, I reminded myself that I was also on a business trip. Only the business I had to attend to was the matter of saying goodbye.

The next morning, I stood at a hilly gravesite about 90 minutes north of New York City. Dressed in a suit and an overcoat, I delivered my grandfather’s eulogy. Three carefully crafted pages meant to reflect the life of someone who meant so much to me.

After I’d finished, the rest of my family shared assorted tidbits about my grandfather — stories he’d told, and stories he’d lived. After we’d finished, we lowered the urn holding his ashes into the ground and watched as the cemetery workers covered it with dirt.

By then, we could no longer tolerate the 25 degree conditions. We retreated to the car, and headed to a nearby town to eat lunch.

And with the car in motion, I put the process of saying goodbye behind me.

My handling of my grandfather’s passing flew in the face of convention. In a time of grief and mourning, I was calculated and reserved.

There was no need for me to make a big deal out of this event, I thought. Death comes to all of us eventually, and my grandfather had been blessed with a long and fulfilling life. I had no reason to feel sorry for myself, or for others to feel sorry for me. Better to focus on the positives, and then to move on.

This approach led to some uncomfortable moments. My family seemed irked that I was so emotionally detached from the moment at hand. And when my co-workers eventually learned why I’d disappeared for close to a week, they felt awkward addressing it.

Even some friends of mine — friends who had met my grandfather and were fond of him — didn’t learn of his passing for months. And when they did, it was only because they happened to ask. I would never have brought it up on my own.

Looking back, I’m not proud of any of this. It’s clear I didn’t handle my grandfather’s passing all that well.

But I’m not too hard on myself about it. For my blunders are practically par for the course.

Many of us struggle to deal with loss.

Whenever we encounter the end of a life, a relationship or a job, we try not to talk about it. We swallow our emotions and move on.

It’s unclear where this tradition of silence came from. Perhaps our nation’s rugged frontier roots spawned it. Or our omnipresent machismo.

Regardless, we handle loss like a hot potato. It’s the object we try not to touch. It’s the elephant in the room that is never addressed.

And now, in the wake of a pandemic that’s upended everything, we’re returning to these well-worn paths of avoidance.

Life looks markedly different than it did mere months ago. That much should be clear. The threat of a lethal virus has forced us to change the way we work, socialize and care for ourselves. Many traditions we’ve long taken for granted have gone on hiatus.

Yet, we’ve done our best not to dwell on any of this. After all, we’re still in survival mode. Best to put our blinders on and consider what lies ahead. At least that’s how the prevailing thinking goes.

In a vacuum, this strategy seems rational. But I’m not sure it’s the right approach for this moment.

No matter how loathe we are to admit it, we have all lost something recently.

Yes, some of us have sustained more significant losses than others. A loved one, maybe. Or a job. But no one has been untouched by the ongoing pandemic — or the ensuing recession.

We’ve all lost something — even if that something was as simple as the ability to go out on the town.

Some of what we’ve lost will return someday. The more trivial things, mostly. But even when they come back, our cavalier attitude won’t accompany them. Once burned, twice shy.

There is precedent here. It’s been decades since the 9/11 attacks, and yet entering an important building still gives us pause. We find the security protocols both reassuring and unnerving.

The events of that one fateful day have left an indelible mark on us. And this tragedy — which has lasted for months — will surely leave its scars as well.

But while old patterns are sure to repeat themselves, we’re far less likely to address them this time around.

For there are no images of burning buildings. No towers of rubble demanding our attention. The trauma is taking place out of sight — in homes, in hospital corridors and in our own minds.

It’s all too easy to do what we so often do when facing a loss. To do what I did after my grandfather passed.

To hide from it all. To stow our emotions away. To race to move on.

But let’s make this time different.

Instead of taking the easy road, let’s take the inconvenient path. The one that forces us to account for the shock we’ve endured. The one that embraces our own vulnerability.

This won’t be pretty, and it won’t be comfortable. But it will pay dividends down the line.

And in such volatile times, that’s a trade that we should readily make.

The things we’ve lost are significant. It’s time to stop hiding from that fact.