“Up & down, and up & down. And side to side, and side to side..” I`m not sure if those words were from a song or a story. But I remember hearing it many, many years ago.
The words, each one, was drawn out. The cadence of those sentences had a twang to it. It’s harder for me to describe, though in your company I could repeat it very well to you.
From kinda early on we are taught that life has it’s ups and downs. It is re-enforced by our own life experiences, until in our young adulthood we are convinced of it’s certainty.
Somehow it seems that someone, or many someones, has forgotten to warn us about the side to sides.
To me the ups and downs are the joys and the sorrows, and the most everything in between. They are a good part of what shapes us. If we are lucky we experience these alongside family and/or friends. We come out a little stronger.
But the side to sides… oh, boy! These are those moments, those times, those experiences that seem to absolutely slam you out of nowhere. Something we cannot control. That throw us completely off kilter.
Rather than just shaping us they sharply and sometimes painfully define us.
I had initially thought that what is now a pandemic was something that would relatively quickly pass. It could maybe be handled, dealt with and quickly moved on from… another ‘down’ in life.
But it is not. It is a ‘side to side’. Slammed one way, then another. Unrelenting. Not controlled.
It breaks my heart to see the pain this has caused, and will continue to cause for some time. It is indiscriminate. That’s one of the scariest things about it. At the least causing extra caution and fear. At the worst… well, the worst.
We have all been unwillingly thrown into this particular side to side. Thrown into something we do not want, and cannot yet fix or control.
What happens now will define each and every one of us. How we act or react.
I see frustration, grief, pain, worry and anger. I’ve shared in each of those emotions in the last few months.
But I also see far more depth of love, hope, kindness, encouragement, caring, compassion, understanding and determination.
Though I have been through the first of those last two statements, I sincerely pray that years from now my children will look back on this time period and remember of their mom far more of the second.
To the very best of your ability please strive in the next few weeks to make a positive difference in the life of another. And what an enormously huge difference that can make!
Of Loss and Love 