The Intersection of Loss and Love

TW: Mental Health, Suicide, Loss of a child

Robert Frost talked about this once, didn’t he? His was roads. I see this intersection. The way to the right is paved. The left turns to gravel and dirt. Both separated by structures that reach the heavens.

We stand and look at each other. We have our pen and paper in hand. A single sheet with only two words written across the top: “PRO” and “CON”.

The right way I see the home we’ve built. The cats. The games. The food. The paintings.

Hopeful? Happy? Like the smell of rain lost on concrete once the sun has come out.

The left one is a bit foggy. You’re still there. I know that much. Everything else is less clear. Where is it? Is it a short jog or a marathon away? I can’t see. Maybe there’s a full life there. Or perhaps a short one.

It’s at least longer than my great grandmother got. 29 and that’s all she had. I’ve got a year, almost two, on her. Hopefully I’ll get another. I hope you get them all.

What was it that Frost said?

I look at the right one. Less than a foot ahead I see a small home filled to the brim. Us. We’re tired but happy. I cry at night, but you don’t see it. I don’t let you. When I glance in I look happy, even though I know it isn’t true. A small me runs around. She won’t reach the same fate as me, but we have the same journey.

The left path is unfamiliar. It isn’t what our parents want. It wasn’t what we thought we wanted, but yet we’re walking hand in hand down this unpaved road, tripping over the electrical wires sticking up through the rocks and dirt. We see a small home filled to the brim. Us. We’re tired but happy. I cry at night, but you see it. I let you. You know now. You help me though the dry desert of my mind. You pull me through when my legs don’t cooperate.

I was right. It was Robert Frost.

Our grip tightens as we look through the gray buildings to the right road. I see it all. All the time we get with her. She grows. She struggles. We give her all the help that she can handle. We try to help her. It’s more than I got. It’s more than my great grandmother got. Lillian. She didn’t know. No one knew until it was too late. But we know in retrospect. We know three generations later. We know the causes. We know the treatments. We give them all to Bethany and it still isn’t enough. I don’t want to bury a child at 29. I don’t want to bury a child at 70. I don’t want to bury a child.

Happy for a minute? Disaster for a lifetime?

Maybe that’s all she gets. We don’t get to choose that. Some will say we do. I don’t.

Alone? Lonely? Unfulfilled?

Along the road we walk, my mother asks everything. Says we were her greatest years of life. She doesn’t know how much I want to want those years of my own. I say that’s sweet and leave as I came. Without a word. With a tear tucked away behind Dad’s green eyes.

The street grows longer. A child screams from the other side. My child. Her curly red hair sticks to her wet face and you try desperately to make sense of what’s wrong. I race from the porch, but I know what it is: she has finally fallen. Fallen into the dark alley that has plagued us for generations. I’m so sorry, Beth.

The wires from underground have come up my legs. They’re pulling me down. You tug slightly at my hand. I lift my foot and the cables oblige my request.

We continue onward.

Mother dies. Dad dies. I still have siblings. My sister is indestructible. I’m happy she didn’t get the gene that Bethany did. We visit others in the family. We give them the love that fills us. When love is lost it has to go elsewhere. We pour it into our nieces and nephews.

On the left we meet a little girl, with red hair and curls. She isn’t our DNA. She’s better. We care for her for three months and let her go. We don’t let her see us cry when she runs back to her birth mother. We wave and smile and hold everything in until we get to the van. Then we sob. We hold each other. We don’t let go until the streetlights say it’s time.

Across the way we grow old. We never stop mourning. We know we never will. Was this really better?

Loss. Loss Loss.

That’s all we know. Our life stopped when hers did. We try to continue on, but we still see her. We have to move. We can’t stay in the small home anymore. It smells like her.

I want to go over there. To tell myself it’ll be alright. To come over here. Because here, there is still loss, but not that kind. Not the unbearable one.

Our way widens. Stretching further so I can barely make out the lamp lights to the right of us. There are people. Friends. Ones we call family. There is joy and misery.

The bus stop across the way blocks my view. I can barely see. But I see joy. I see sorrow. There is more to life than death, after all. It takes us a while to see that, but we do. And even though her life does not move on, ours does.

We continue onward, as we always do. As we always will. The world was not made for us, but we are a part of. A small part in this large story. She isn’t a part of this world, but at least she’s here in another lifetime.

Maybe there is regret at the end of this left road. Maybe there is grief. But I’d rather have this. Because the pain of a life without her is better than the pain of losing her.