Learnings From Losses of This Past Year – Vol. 469, Sept. 27, 2018 

This past year has been a very challenging one, yet a very healing one to be sure. There are still many questions that I have regarding my life and where it is going, but there have been many gains as well. I want to share these with you because it is most helpful to remember the important experiences for what they are worth in how we view life in general.

This year I lost two very important people in my life. One, my mother, represented so much of what was so special about my youth, yet miserable in my adult life. She was the person who had the faith that I could be something beyond all the learning disabilities of my youth, and do valuable things with my life. She made sure I got my education and for that, I will always be grateful. However, throughout my entire adult life, her issues bombarded my life with distractions from my hypnosis practice and my life in general. The stressors of dealing with her problems brought on medical conditions of my own. I made the important decision to stop engaging with her once she was safely taken care of in a nursing home thanks to the second person that I lost this year, my best friend from college, Richard. 

I never planned on seeing mom again, yet, the powers that brought me back to the east coast to work with some old hypnosis clients, brought me geographically near to her nursing home. I spent the last ten days of her life with her. I wish I could say it was fulfilling, but it was not as she was cranky, demanding and ungrateful. But, what I can say, is that her passing was beautiful with the last words she told me being, “I had a wonderful time raising my kids and had two wonderful marriages.” That was a learning that worth getting after being an integral part of her tumultuous life living with severe mental illness. She was ready to die, and I was glad I was a part of it in the end.

The second person I lost, was my best friend from college, Richard. I can’t say that I was as close to him at this point in his life as I was for most of our years as friends, as he complained endlessly both about his physical state and his anger and upset with all those people he felt abandoned him emotionally and physically. Knowing him for 39 years, this was certainly the case. However, one has to understand that people can only be there to the degree that they are capable. This is something that he never learned, even as a person who worked with the developmentally disabled for the majority of his adult life. In the end, it killed him and he was only 57 years old. 

Over the past couple of decades, I have seen too many people die well before their time. Many of them were the sweetest people on the planet. One needs to ask why this is so? I really don’t know the histories of all of them. But, I do know that for the great majority there were deep emotional issues with the members of their families of origin.

Life isn’t fair and wasn’t meant to be. However, it is high time we realize what people are capable of and what they are not. It is best to acknowledge this, basing the relationships with the people in our lives on this knowledge. Because we are totally unable to change another. The only person we can change is ourselves. To live life in a manner that continues to fulfill our curiosities, while engaging in loving relationships that nurture us, starting with ourselves. 

Demanding that someone give one love and care that is outside the realm of their abilities is what creates a lot of ill health. So, be reasonable with the expectations of those in your life and if need be, take space. I did so with both Richard and my mother. I was there at the end when it was needed and that is what mattered in the great scheme of things.