Closure

Closure. If you're like me, when you read that word, what immediately jumps to mind is the phrase 'closure is a myth'. But upon further rumination, I have to disagree. I think if we look instead at what the word is really intended to mean, we will find that we are simply misinterpreting the concept of 'closure'.

According to society, closure is supposed to be an end. It's supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel that is grief, suffering, or trauma. All too often, people struggling through difficult times find themselves frustrated when that 'end' comes, and we don't suddenly feel better. But closure is not erasure, not forgetting, not 'coming around' to see things differently. Closure changes, not erases, the pain that preceded it. We don't like, we don't forget, we only begrudgingly accept our pain - but somewhere along the line, it gets a little less cumbersome to carry around with us. That's what closure really is - a slow, gradual process of learning to live with things we'd rather not.

Our society seems to think that closure comes from some action, either on the part of the sufferer or by some legal, moral or ethical system. Once we put the bad guys behind bars, the victims will have closure. Once we find out what happened to the missing person, their family will have closure. Once we lay our loved ones to rest, we can find closure. That notion, that performing some human action somehow triggers this magical peace called "closure" to fall upon us, is one of the most damaging approaches to the grief process.

Loss doesn't end when 'answers' are found. Pain doesn't stop hurting when justice is done. Grief isn't over when the funeral service is. In fact, these are often the most difficult times for sufferers and mourners. When everything is sorted out, put away, packed into neat little boxes, when everyone else goes back to their lives, and a hurting person must try to go back to their life, the way it was before tragedy struck... that's the hardest part of grief.

You go to work or school the next day. Everyone is talking and laughing and there are posters for upcoming activities or achievements, you are expected to go back to being productive, to getting things done, as if the trauma you experienced didn't just happen... that's when you want to scream. Everybody seems to think you'll be 'okay' now, and you're just not.

Several years ago I lost my best friend Angie to bone cancer. She fought it for over five years, lost a leg, a lung, her hair over and over, and then God called her home. The whole time, Angie had this attitude, this way about her that just made all of us forget, just for a moment, the monster in the room (the dreaded C word) - and just have fun being together. Angie was the best person I've ever known. The day before she died, I sat by her bed and held her hand and promised her that we would be okay, that it would take time but we would get there.

The day she passed, hospice came and cleared out all the medical equipment. The funeral home came and took her after a couple hours. The pastor from the church came and talked to us. We all started planning services and tributes and all the arrangements that come with losing someone you love. We set to work for days, put together a visitation and a funeral service, came together to remember our lost loved one... we cried, we laughed, we experienced it together, and if you weren't okay - well, that was okay too.

Then the funeral service was over. We had dinner together and then everyone went home. The next day was a weekday and I had to work. My coworkers were sympathetic, but no one could have stopped that first day back from being one of the hardest things I ever had to do. I remember getting up in the morning, getting dressed, thinking I was okay... driving to work, logging onto my computer, greeting my coworkers, and then... I was just walking back to my office from the bathroom when it hit me out of nowhere. My best friend was gone and I was never going to see her again.

I almost fainted in the hallway. I still remember the dizzying way the tiles on the floor seemed to spin as I tried to catch my breath, a crippling panic attack overtaking me. I remember rushing back to the relative privacy of the bathroom before slumping to the floor and sobbing. I remember looking at myself in the mirror, willing myself to 'get it together', but the panic wouldn't abate. Eventually I knew I had to come out of the bathroom, but as soon as I walked into the office I shared with the rest of the injury prevention team, I ran into my boss and I couldn't hide the sheer torment on my face. She asked me if I was okay and I broke. Ugly sobbing in the middle of my office. She gave me the rest of the day off. I think that day was the worst day of my grief - trying to go back to normal, to all the people who, for some reason, didn't seem to have noticed that the world had stopped spinning. I just wanted to scream at them, "Don't you realize that everything is WRONG now??" But my grief was not theirs.

The following day I tried the 'go to work' thing again, and this time I did a little better. I had panic attacks all day, but I managed to contain them. Worse, I worked with a population of at-risk kids for four hours each day at that time, and they didn't even know anything had gone awry in my life. They didn't need any more troubles. Still, I wanted to scream all day, at all the people who couldn't see that the planet had just shifted off its axis, but I didn't. I did cry the second I got into my car to go home. I did call my mom at lunch and wonder aloud if it would ever get better.

After that every day got a little better. Not a lot. I had to be on medication for the crippling panic attacks I was experiencing regularly. Visions of those last days still haunted me every time I closed my eyes. I was somehow unable to remember over 8 years of happy times but blinded by a few days of tragedy. People told me that would start to change... with time. And I wanted to rage against this 'time' thing, this thing that was the only cure for the misery I was in, but that which eluded me. I won't lie. That was a dark time in my life. Little things would remind me of my friend, and still stuck in the grips of mourning, all I could think about were the worst of times. I don't even know how long it took before the good memories started to outweigh the bad, but I know it felt like far too long, and in the eyes of nearly everyone else, it was 'over' and I was supposed to be 'okay' now.

All I wanted to do was scream that I was not okay. That the funeral, the visitation, the things we'd done in memory of my best friend, had not given me this elusive 'closure' thing that was supposed to mark the end. At that time in my life, I did firmly believe that closure was a myth - but I, and the rest of society, simply failed to understand what closure actually meant. It wasn't something that came from a funeral service or from finally having answers, it wasn't a switch that flipped... it was this slow, gradual ascent from the depths of grief until finally, one day, you looked around and realized that you didn't look back and cry so often anymore - that you could finally look back and smile.

Today I feel closure. That doesn't mean I forget Angie, or that I miss her any less, but now the good memories outnumber the bad. Now I see her everywhere - the rainbow on a day when I just can't seem to dry my tears... the whisper in God's ear that she promised to make - to look after my dear borrowed kids... the sight of one of her favorite things in my daily life. And I thank God for having the priviledge to know her.