Being With Loss

How is it possible to allow loss to simply be? To allow that things sometimes don’t add up, make sense, or work out?

I’m still in shock and recovery over the fact that my laptop crashed last week. All emails, all photos, and who knows what else. Gone.

The Mac doc has it now, digging through the wreckage to see if anything can be salvaged.

It feels like my beloved steed just died; the workhorse that carried my book and me through years of gestation and birth. I’m so sad.

I’ve dusted off an old laptop. Now it feels like I’m living in a trailer.

It’s not just a computer that has put me over the edge of unbearableness. I’m also still…

• Drying out and clearing the damage from a major flood in my basement (the result of a broken washing machine hose which unloaded up to two inches of water);
• Consoling a majorly bummed-out daughter who didn’t get into some of her top choice colleges.
• Holding a space for my husband who’s on week two of a persistent stomach virus.
• Reeling from the loss of all my emails and email addresses (wondering how many students, friends, and prospective clients are going to think I’m a flake for not responding).
  

I’m not complaining, mind you. If anything, I feel profoundly grateful. Next to the death of a loved one or a pet, or a Hurricane Katrina-type loss, these events are small potatoes. My house is still standing. I have my family and my health. Computers (and email addresses) are replaceable. People will find me somehow if they really need to. My daughter will discover that among the acceptances, there’s a perfect college that does want her, and sees her brilliance and joy.

I’m just allowing myself to feel the cumulative impact of what seems like a train wreck. To “stay with the initial tightening and not spin off,” as Pema Chödrön wisely advises in one of her quotes that I love so much.

What I’m sitting with is not the why-me-why-now endless loop tape. I’ve learned the hard way that those kinds of questions are pretty ineffectual.

What I’m wondering is…

• How is it possible to allow these losses (or any loss) to simply be? To allow that things sometimes don’t add up, make sense, or work out?
• How (and why) is it possible to remain spacious and detached in the middle of a crisis? To be the “eye,” not the storm?
• What can I do right now for myself to feel better? […I just heard the word…“Breathe!”]