Welcome to the Land of the Lost

It’s been a week since we officially sold the house that I thought would be our home. The physical representation of a place where we would build a life together and where I had tried to give my love to a man that was not capable of returning it. Two days before closing and as I finished the tasks to close, I turned to my stepmom Jane (who drove me the 3 hours just make sure I wasn’t alone). I smiled through tears and quipped, “Welcome to the land of the lost.” As we drove home, me sobbing in the passenger seat and washed in grief, she replied – “if it makes you feel any better, I feel like I’ve been living in the land of the lost for the past year.”

I was a bit stunned. Her statement did allow me to take a beat and grab a Kleenex but also – what? Over the past year, I had seen such an incredible transformation in her. I had seen reaction turn to observation. Admired her ability to not numb herself with alcohol or other easy buttons. I had witnessed her put healthy boundaries in place in a way that I wish that I could do for myself. I’d turned to her on my darkest days in the last month, where she validated me and lifted me up. Really? She was in the Land of the Lost? How could this be? From where I was sitting, she had taken grief and found love in herself and others in a way that I only hoped I could.

In doing a bit more research, I started to digest the connection between grief and love. I finished reading Between Two Kingdoms, a memoir by Suleika Jaouad – a cancer survivor trying to navigate moving from the land of the most-certainly-dead to the land of the living. In describing her journey trying to get through the in-between by traveling she writes: as I wander through the ornamental gardens, I think of how the Taj [Mahal] embodies both love and grief…you don’t get one without the other. The Taj Mahal was erected as a memorial to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan after the death of his wife whom he loved dearly. Grief had built something beautiful in this grand, white mausoleum that represented deep love. 

I started attending church again. The weekend before closing, the sermon focused on Ezekiel 37: 1 – 14, a story of the land of dry bones. Ezekiel is led to a valley full of bones and told to prophesize to them in hopes that they will once again live. Now, these bones were very dry and there thousands of them strewn about the valley, symbolizing the people of Israel where all hope had dried up, grief had taken their breath and their vision of life was long gone.