22
2011
The Art Of Losing
Today's guest post is from our development manager, Christina Vo, who recently lost her apartment in a fire. We asked her if she would write a post about her experience since so many young people deal with loss from circumstances beyond their control. Whether it's the sudden death of a loved one or losing a home due to fire or tornadoes or flooding or even foreclosure, loss is something we all grapple with at some point.
One of my favorite poems was written by Elizabeth Bishop and it's called One Art.
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
This poem became even more important to me over the past week when I've been dealing with the temporary loss of my apartment, which was destroyed because of a fire.
We were lucky - nobody was hurt and we were able to salvage most of our personal items. The upstairs neighbors weren't as fortunate since they lost many of their personal belongings.
I've thought about loss a lot and how to deal with a loss - whether the loss involves a person, a physical place or even something simple, yet comforting, like our personal belongings. I loved the new apartment that I was staying in and enjoyed the company of my new flatmates. It truly felt like we were building a home together, and, then, it was gone - so quickly. The very foundation that I stood on was no longer there for me.
But, as with everything in life, there are lessons to be learned and strength to be amassed from trying situations. We all deal with loss differently and for me, my initial reaction was to "do," meaning that I was frenetically working on all the details trying to figure out where we were going to live, contacting the post office to hold our mail and working to get out the remainder of our belongings.
I stayed up late at night worrying about what was going to happen to us, the newly 'displaced' tenants, trying to figure out how we would find temporary accommodation in this tight rental market. After a few days of physical and emotional exhaustion, I let myself actually feel the loss. This was an important moment for me, because even though I do believe we can master the art of loss, as implied by Elizabeth Bishop's poem, I believe it's important to feel a loss, to mourn a loss and then to find productive ways to move forward.
It's taken me a long time to acknowledge the importance of feeling. When I suffered big losses when I was younger, I plowed forward without thinking or feeling, and the loss that I didn't mourn would come back to haunt me in different ways. I guess, the important thing to remember is that we'll always get past any loss, we'll always grow stronger from the experience, but there's also nothing wrong with allowing yourself to fully feel in the moment of loss.
The lessons of loss will be even brighter and clearer in the future, I'm sure of it.
Photo by Nick Boyer
Have you experienced a big loss recently? What helped you get through it?
