Loss of a Loved One: Part 2

I was blessed to receive a friend request from a lovely lady today.  During our brief give and take I learned her father had been military Intelligence, as I was, and that he had passed.  None of this was more evident, however, than the memory, love, and respect she still feels for him.  I apologized to her for unintentionally stirring the emotional pot.  Working passed her mistiness, she reminded me that "letting out your emotions anyways is good for the soul."  I know this, but I sometimes need to be reminded.  This set me to thinking that perhaps my own father's recent close call has created a numbness to my own emotions concerning the reality of his mortality.  Maybe it scared the crap out of me.

I am so easy to shed a tear at the drop of a hat, yet I hold my emotions to personal issues very close.  I am the first to share an incident, but rarely do I share my true emotion to the incident.  I have never had to confront the loss of parent of child.  The only thing I am absolutely positive of, were I to let it all hang out when it ever does happen, it will not be the reaction of a mature adult.  I wonder if it ever is.  Reading how my new friend discusses her loss, memories, love and respect for her own father with such grace, I only hope I will can find the obvious strength of this woman half my age.

"How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life."

--  Admiral James T. Kirk, Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan

As with life, I think we need to meet death head on with all the emotion and gusto we give to life.  Our religious and spiritual belief can assist us after the event takes its emotional toll, but we must let it take that toll.  The emotions we feel in dealing with events in our life is what helps us to grow, prepare for our own inevitable passing, and minister to others that will eventually face death in one aspect or another.  Perhaps I shouldn't be so concerned with how I handle loss.  What is important is that I feel the emotion at all.  

The emotions accompanying loss is as much proof of who they were, as it is proof of who we are.