Experience, the Essential Educator

All day yesterday my thoughts were directed towards death and dying, the passing of my father, the intertwined lives of parents and children, the loss of a parent, grief and healing...all thoughts precipitated by the passing of my friends' mother after a battle with cancer. I had planned to go to her wake last night, and all day my thoughts gravitated towards these seemingly morbid thoughts. Somehow, I didn't consider them morbid. Instead, I felt that they were necessary because I was re-experiencing the loss and grief of my own father, and in some way, identifying with the loss my friends were experiencing.

I have attended many wakes and funerals, possibly with increasing frequency as I age. I recognized that for the first time I truly apprehended what it meant to lose a parent. I knew what it felt like for a child to see their parent's body lie in a coffin. I felt the pain my friends must have felt when their parent first passed away, the shock, the finality, the closure to a period of pain and illness... I could enter into these experiences alongside my friends because I too had been through them. I said nothing about these things, but I felt them. I think it resonated with my friends, and one of them very kindly asked about my father, recognizing that his passing was still fresh for me.

And yes, it is fresh. It is hard to go to a wake and not be reminded of what I endured, thoughthe circumstances are very different. Experience helped me identify, but it also brought the past alive and I did feel pain. When I came home I found myself tearful. Tears I had held back welled up in my eyes. I thought through the parallels and the disparities between circumstances and I relived some pain, but I let it go soon enough.

Experience is useful for people who live with chronic illness too...it educates us even as we live through it. My having surgery now allows me to identify with others who have had surgery. In the past it would have been some abstract and theoretical head knowledge of what surgery might have been like. Now it is real, visceral, concrete...I know it in my head and my heart and my guts...and of course I should...they got the chop! :)

As painful as experiencing something can be, each experience has its positive side. It can help us identify, help us empathize, help us help others who go through similar experiences. I choose to cherish my experiences then, for they go towards making me, ME. Even the "bad" experiences can be used for good if I choose to look for the good in them. I do choose, and I cherish. My experiences are an essential educator that have taught me how to be a better person. I am not afraid of what experiences may come. I embrace them.

Thanks for reading!

Pav