|
|
|
COVER STORY: Loss — a Painful Reality
If I were to ask you to shut your eyes and think of something very sad inevitably it would be about the loss of someone close to you. True, losing someone can be the saddest thing in the world. But then every individual in this world has lost someone very dear to him. Either the person has died or has gone so far away that he can’t be met anymore. Loss is bound to happen to all of us; so, let us get to know more about it as it will give us a better understanding of this phenomenon, then we won’t be scared of it and would be prepared for it.
Loss generally implies death, but sometimes we lose a person because they have gone too far away that we can’t be with them any more. When my best friend’s family decided to emigrate to Canada we were all excited for them but as the day came nearer we got sadder and the thought of her not being around anymore made me miserable, with her gone away I would have no one to talk to, who would I share my secrets with, after all we had been friends since we were three. When she left I was inconsolable and wanted to go with her, but of course that was not to be. Her house where I used to be all the time was completely empty. I was nine and my little world had ended. Then one day I saw a new bicycle in my friend’s front-yard and then there was a girl sitting there who was as gloomy as I was. Her name was Freya and she had left her best friend in Lahore and moved with her family to my neighbourhood soon we became great friends. Though I didn’t forget my best-friend, the emptiness that I felt when she went away was filled by Freya’s friendship, and I had coped with her loss. She wrote to me from Canada and I am sure she too wasn’t as sad anymore as she had made new friends.
When someone moves away it is possible to write to the person or at least speak over the phone, he could even come and visit you after a while and you can be together again but death is grimmer than distance; when a person dies they are no more.
Death seems meaner, as it takes away that person forever. The person will never return —be it our parents grandparents or siblings. When someone in the family passes away, for instance someone’s grandmother, it comes as a big shock. There is a lot of confusion and it is proven that little children feel more hurt and confused than anyone. As children you may want to know where did my grandmother go, why did she have to go, what does it mean to die, can’t she come back, what can I do to make her come back. Or you may just be so sad that she is gone and decide to cry until she comes back.
Why do people have to die?
Well have you seen the movie Lion King and heard the song about the circle of life, it talks about how every body is born in this world, lives their life and then it is their turn to go. Most old people leave us as they have completed their circle of life and as good-byes are always sad all of us feel hurt when they leave.
But sometimes people don’t complete this circle and leave us a little sooner than others, some others live for quiet long and spend more time in this world; this is because it is a special thing called ‘fate’. Fate is like a special plan for each person and everyone has his own fate and no one knows about it, only God does.
It could be in someone’s plan to live till he or she is 80 years old, and someone else’s plan says that he could live till he turns 62. So some people live long and some have it in their fate to live a little less and so they die. We have to accept this plan, not accepting it by fighting it can make it even more difficult.
It is better to tell children the truth than lie to them. When Fazal’s father, a pilot passed away in an air crash his family told him that daddy wouldn’t be returning as he had gone to America. At the age of 15 when he finally discovered the truth he felt cheated and angry as he had spent so many years waiting for him.
Coping with death
Even if we know all about death it still comes as a big shock. How does one deal with it? When someone passes away in your family every one is grieving, the atmosphere becomes even sadder when people come home to tell your family how sad they feel for you. As a child who has lost a parent you could feel lost in this somber atmosphere, even distanced from it all, while adults condole each other and mum or dad are surrounded by relatives. Besides a child could begin to feel sadder when some one express their sympathy and pity him. We must not pay much attention to such pity, instead find support by listening to friends and family who are saying that they are there for you.
You may want to cry and shout out why me, why did my daddy have to leave us and why is everyone else’s daddy still with them. Like I said before, it must have been his fate and we cannot change that, but if you want to cope and feel less hurt you can do it by making some one else feel happy. Give you mummy your support after all she must be feeling sadder and lonelier than you as she has lost her life partner. She truly needs your support; besides she is now all alone and she needs your help to do a lot of things. What about your little brother or sisters, how would they cope? They need your love and now since you are older you could even find a special way of explaining to them and lessening their pain. Coping with death seems to be so difficult; it is difficult but not impossible because after someone passes away we learn to value others as we realize how important they are to us; we could lose them too. We even begin to love them more and help them more. Death can actually bring families close together.
Sometimes it becomes impossible to understand why someone young and healthy has to die like an older brother or a little cousin. True it could be his fate to have a short life but still it is most tragic and devastating.
When we were in school, my partner who sat besides me lost her older brother. He was the only brother and they were very good friends, they shared the same room and loved each other dearly. When he died in a motorcycle accident, she was so sad she wouldn’t smile or laugh or talk to me. I became sad; we were two of the gloomiest girls in our class, she would sit near his photograph and weep. It seemed as if nothing could make her happy again, Things looked very bad.
Do you want to know what happened then? Well we stayed sad for a long time but then we went to class VIII, made new friends, grumbled about studying algebra and borrowed books from the library like everyone else. Slowly and surely we weren’t that sad anymore. After a whole year had passed by, the pain of his death lessened. Time had worked its magic.
What we can learn from this is that time can be a very good healer and after many days and many months of a person’s death we don’t forget the person but we slowly begin to forget the pain of his death.
Another way of coping with death and many other terrible things is by being positive. Being positive is when everything goes wrong and something very bad has happened you find one little thing that is good and nice from it all and staying happy. And believe me there is always one good thing hiding in there like a puzzle you just have to find it.
Being positive means forgetting the pain of that person’s loss but cherishing all the sweet memories that we have of them. Think of all that they told you and wanted you to do and try to do the things they would have wanted you to do like studying harder, not arguing with mummy, this way you will keep their memories alive long after they have gone away.
Talking about death hasn’t been easy at all; it has brought back so many sad memories and may have made many children sad. But there are many children who have recently experienced the grimness of death, I hope to help understand all about the phenomenon of death and so they are able to cope with it.
|
|
|
|
