How to cope with losing someone close to you

I want to talk about loss today.

I feel it is important to discuss the topic of how to cope with losing someone because it is part of our human experience.

We start to see a lot of this in our 20s and 30s.

There are many ways we experience loss - having our close family members pass away; having close friends drift apart or experiencing setbacks in our romantic lives.

What I have grown to accept is - Nothing is permanent in this world.

Life is going to be a series of hellos and then goodbyes.

When I tell my younger peers about impermanence, some react with anger and wonder what is the purpose of life if there are going to be so many goodbyes.

This is why I am dedicating an entire issue to this topic to help us make sense of this all.

The value of loss in our lives

In early 2020, I chanced upon a moving post where this guy was sharing about losing his partner.

It really touched my heart and describes the doubts and difficult emotions that many of us face. And, also how to deal with it.

Here is how he perceives it:

🌿 These are all part of the human experience

🌿 How can one navigate these ups and downs of life?

Hope, thinking about what you can learn and recognizing that you have a choice

🌿 The downs help us appreciate the ups better

5 lessons from letting go of someone you cannot have

I once spent more than a year trying to move on from someone.

Not sure when my feelings for him grew to this extent.

Gradually, I noticed myself starting to pay attention to the smallest details.

I constantly wondered about what I could do to make his day better.

For example, there was once he invited me to join him on his work trip.

During the few days, I would wake up earlier as my tours began around 6 AM.

Before I left for my tour, while he was asleep, I would boil water for him. This is so that by the time he woke up, it will be cool enough for him to hydrate himself.

It brought me a lot of joy to be able to care for him this way. I hoped that these small actions could bring him some small moments of happiness given his intensive job.

However, due to circumstances, I had to end things abruptly. I never once questioned my decision to walk away.

What I was not prepared for, was how long I would take to move on.

Here are 5 lessons I learned from this incident:

1. Just have a clean break:
Looking back, we should have kept more distance. He once showed up at an event knowing I was going to be there for sure. That evening and the subsequent weeks were difficult for me.

He would reach out when facing struggles in his personal life to ask for advice. I did wonder if I should just ignore these messages but I guess a part of me could not bear the thought of him feeling any kind of pain.

On my end, I did reach out to check in from time to time. My questions were always the same “How have you been these days? How are you feeling?” 其实我不要求什么，只希望你快乐

2. Do not consume their content:
When I missed him, I will look at our old photos; go to YouTube and watch his media interviews; videos of him speaking at panels and hear his voice. He was often in the news and I would read the articles about how well he was doing and feel happy for him. If I did not do that to myself, I might have moved on faster.

3. Accept the reality as it is: 
I guess part of me always had some hope that the situation could be different. I remember having a 小小的愿望 which was that one day, we can talk to each other like normal people.

There is no alternate universe out there. There is only one reality that I live in and that is the present. 放下的第一步，是要接受事实，停下心里所有的疑问。

4. Don’t idealize a person: 
We were only going out with each other for a short time so probably there were many shortcomings I did not see yet.

5. Find meaning in the experience:
Everyone comes into our life for a purpose. I was feeling lost about my future direction before I met him. He gave me a sense of direction by inspiring me to aim higher.

喜欢人不犯法，可我也只能到喜欢为止了。人生无棋落子无悔，我们之间本来就没恩怨，有的，只是一段缘分。

Reframing loss

What has been the most helpful for me in dealing with endings in my life is reframing the experience with them as something to be grateful for.

When my ah ma passed away, I did not deal with it well because I had several regrets.

I was also angry with the situation and myself. I started to isolate myself and simply disappeared from social circles.

What I find useful was really approaching things from the perspective of gratitude:

Rather than mourn for a future that never was, why not rejoice at the time we had together instead?

How wonderful that I could experience my Ahma’s love for as long as I did.

Now, I can share the love I have for one person by opening my heart up to others and giving it to them too.

I too have been disappointed by transactional friends; romantic relationships that did not work out and people I love passing on.

Despite life having several goodbyes and saying farewell being an inevitable part of life, it is still important to invest emotionally into people, open our hearts and give our best.

I once asked someone how come he still gives his all in relationships despite being heartbroken so many times.

His reply was:

It sums up my perspective on life as well: We cannot control circumstances changing; people leaving us and so many things in this world.

What we can have confidence in, is our ability to deal with things.