Often in life we prefer to focus on the highlights – when we land an amazing job, fall in love, give birth to our precious children, travel to far off places. When we meet people these highlights are the things we are eager to share with them. Our accomplishments and ‘Instagram’ worthy experiences feed our ego and give us a sense that we are truly living our lives.
Alongside these highlights sit our stories of loss and separation, sadness and pain. They too are the baseline experiences of life. We may see these times as deviations from what ‘should’ be happening. Hiding from expressing them with each other, feeling shame and confusion within. At times believing we are alone in our personal suffering.
‘We are all flying high in some ways and falling flat on our faces in others. Nobody has it all figured out’
Amy Weatherly
Yet the bitter and the sweet sit alongside each other. Both types of experiences and the meshing of them together allow us to reach some of the very highest states of our human existence – awe, joy, wonder, love, meaning and creativity. Our life is rich and far from dull and pleasantly vanilla.
A bittersweet realization
My husband has reached the age his father passed away. Several days ago was the exact amount of time his dad had lived his earthly life. As my husband shared this milestone with me we realized the bittersweet nature of this awareness. My husband is fit and healthy for his age and really stepping into some of the life experiences he is passionate about. For his father some of the experiences we now look forward to were not to be part of his life. We realized he had not met any of his great grandchildren (our grandchildren), spent more years with his life partner or attained any more of his lifetime dreams.
If you have lost a parent, particularly of the same gender, you can probably relate. It’s the weird sense of inhabiting a body that corresponds with the final year and months of life of someone you were deeply connected to. Finding it unimaginable that the vibrancy you feel in your own body held decline within theirs. For me that experience was more than a decade ago as I lost my mother when she was in her early fifties. That year in my life became a real turning point in prompting my own reflection.
Awareness of life’s impermanence also has a bittersweet aspect to it. There is a sense of deep gratitude that we are living beyond the death age of our same gender parents. Having the ability to experience more of life into the future. No longer taking for granted the additional birthdays we can celebrate.
It was interesting for us to compare the possibilities for living to midlife compared to the experience of adding several more decades and living into our eighties or beyond. Particularly the potential of seeing more life change and welcoming new generations into our family. We realized we had been gifted with the ability to write a longer life story than our parents.
‘The love you lost, or the love you wished for and never had: That love exists eternally. It shifts its shape, but it’s always there. The task is to recognize it in its new form.’
Susan Cain
Our lives have a truly unexpected quality. Some of our deepest and most painful moments can also be some of our most meaningful. They can help us appreciate life, support each other more and motivate us to prioritize those things we most cherish. Having a sense of the bittersweet nature of life also provides us with pathways to heal from our own traumatic past experiences.