I just lost a great post.

I had written a blog entry about loss. (Yes, I can see the irony oozing out from under my spacebar). I had written about four hundred words contemplating whether or not you ever truly get over losing something you love...or whether you just spend the rest of your life with a tender spot in you that hurts if it is poked or slept on wrong. It told the story of an acquaintence of mine who lost his mom...it's a tragic story, and it may very well have made you cry. I told the story of an old heartbreak of mine... a trivial story in light of somebody's mom dying, but nothing is trivial when you're seventeen, you're insecure, and you're infatuated with romanticism. I was just getting into a section about how I have a hard time letting go...that memories, even happy ones, produce a kind of melancholy in me and feel a lot like loss...

...and then I closed the window.

Why would I close the window, you ask?

Because I'm an idiot. I wanted to check my calendar for something, and so I instinctively clicked the little red "close" icon in my web browser to clear a path.

So, here we are. I didn't want to rewrite the whole post because I'm trying to spite my web browser by not giving it the sastisafaction of watching me retype the whole thing. Also because the second time, it's just not going to feel as good as the first one...that first one is gone in a tragic moment now, and much like Curt Cobain or John Lennon, it is thereore perfect, and can never be replaced.

At the same time, I didn't want to write about anything else because, let's face it, I wanted to talk about loss.



So, here is a very short thought about loss that I didn't type in the original post...

I think part of your development process can halt abruptly in the presence of loss. Based on what I heard last night from my acquaintence, I wonder if he is still waiting for his mom to come home. I think there may still be a five-year-old inside of him who stands at their afternoon rendevous point, waiting for a mom who will never arrive. I think, in many ways, I am still waiting as well. I don't want to get into it...it's too personal for me and probably too boring for you, but there is a part of me that is still waiting, hoping that I'll get what I've been waiting 24 years or so for. I don't know if I'll ever get over it...I don't know if I'll ever stop waiting. I wonder if any us do...if we ever stop waiting for that girlfriend to call and apologize, for Dad to call Mom and say he's returning, for your wife to come home from the hospital, for that shaggy golden retriever to come bounding through the door, or for God to answer.

I tend to think not. I tend to think there is a little part in us that keeps calling out, keeps waiting, keeps a hope alive that in the end, it's not a loss...it's just a delay.

Peace,
Justin