Loss Brings Grief, Empathy and Perspective

I’ve spent the morning crying for a high school friend.

She was a junior when I was a sophomore, and we were in a couple of clubs together. Really down-to-earth, gorgeous, sweet girl. I haven’t seen her since she graduated.

Today on Reunion.com, I read a message she posted last May about her brother. Her brother was a year ahead of her. He was an adorable jock kind of guy and they were good friends throughout school.

Her post said that her brother had lost a three and a half year battle with brain cancer. He left behind his loving wife of fourteen years and their two daughters. And, I noticed in the message, as if it couldn’t get any worse, one of his surviving daughters has leukemia.

I wrote my friend an e-mail in remembrance of her brother and to send her and her family my wishes for love and healing. She wrote back quickly to thank me, and then told me her grief was made even more unbearable this August when her eight-year-old boy drowned on vacation just four days after the one-year mark of her brother’s death.

Her e-mail told me some days she can’t even bear to breathe but she’s got two other daughters to care for so she just keeps going for them.

God, I couldn’t stop sobbing.

After my first child was born, I was shocked by the fierceness of my love and my desire to protect him. One day, as he slept in my arms, I found myself crying over him, begging the gods that his presence in my life would not be temporary.

Since then, my prayer has broadened to include others closest to me — my husband and my daughter — but, always, it is my desperate plea. And I know that as I sit at the computer crying for my friend, it was her plea, too.

By Anjie Reynolds