Hello everyone...
In my bloggish absence lo these past weeks, I have been increasingly busy teaching and volunteering and mothering and wifeing and all sorts of other things that are, quite honestly, too dull to mention.
But increasingly I have had opportunities and moments where I have had to reflect on the nature of loss.
Loss is unavoidable and pervasive.
We lose all sorts of things. We lose our figurative (and at times literal) minds. We lose our nerve. We lose our cool. We lose our way. We lose jobs. We lose things. We lose people.
A couple of weeks ago, on a sunny Sunday, I volunteered to do an English language song and games day with a group of about 15 children who were relocated with their families from Fukushima to Kyoto.
These were children who had experienced loss. Loss of families and friends, homes and neighborhoods. They had lost things that are nearly impossible to measure-- their sense of security, their sense of safety, their sense of trust in things that used to seem unchangeable and strong and dependable. The ground beneath their feet. The air they have to breathe.
And when the other volunteers and I stood in front of them for the first time, they eyed us all with uncertainty, faces expressionless. Waiting. I took my place at the large circle of children and began singing an animated, utterly goofy rendition of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes".
That's all it took.
Within 5 seconds there were smiles, wiggles, chattering.
And they were singing with me, voices rising, hands flying.
They were just kids.
Yeah, an hour spent singing English songs and playing crazy games with balloons didn't erase their loss.
But maybe it eased it for a bit.
Perhaps this is what happens to all of us.
Loss ebbs and flows into and out of our lives, shocking us and saddening us by turns.
And then life will offer us a distraction, or a change, or a moment of silliness.
And the loss eases.
And the cycle repeats.
It's not a particularly enjoyable cycle.
But it is a cycle that helps us learn how to appreciate what we have by reflecting on things and people we've lost.
Corny, right? But very, very true.
Loss is our mirror, our Alice-through the looking-glass that keeps us going.
We just have to keep an eye out for that white rabbit.....
Until next time...
