Endings

I just finished peer reviewing an essay on endings. I just consoled a friend who cried about finishing her sophomore year. I just looked out my window and considered how in about a week I will never see this view again in my whole life. As we wrap up this school year, all of campus is getting sentimental.

I find myself overwhelmed with sorrow these days, whenever I think of Pennsylvania, and of my relatives there. My vision turns blurry even now as I write this. Coming face to face with growing up; with realizing that one day all of my grandparents will be dead, and I will have no reason to return to that small village of Lanse any more. That the half eaten jam in my fridge, that jar I can’t bring myself to finish, might be some of the last my grandma ever makes. That the pink-stripped cookies in my freezer might be the final few in this lifetime. It hurts. It cuts deep. Rather, my desperate grasping at the finite feels as if reversed onto my heart. Squeezed to all it can bear, a hand, then, slowly pulls it out from within me. It feels like losing more than people or a place. It feels like a part of me will be gone.

According to my peer’s research, grief comes from the connections formed in our brain from memories and experiences. The ways we learn to live when in the presence of others don’t just go away when they are gone. Rather, they stay with us, and remain alive long past our loved ones. Those neuron connections continue to exist, and it is when they are reignited by some reminder of the person, by some stimulant, that our brains don’t know what to do. The pain of grief is our brain struggling to make sense of these consistent connections in the absence of the individual who created them.

The essay I am writing for this class is about self image. I read a seemingly endless study about how our sense of self comes from our memories. It is built upon the connections that are made over and over, like a consistent sport or place you lived. We call upon those strongest memories to decide who we are.

When reading my classmate’s work, I began to wonder. If grief is the experience of our brains not knowing how to understand these consistent connections in the absence of the individual who initiates them, and our sense of self is created from consistent connections, how much of our sense of self is created from those closest to us? How true is it that losing something or someone is losing a piece of ourselves?

It makes sense though. We are beings created to be everlasting. We were never meant to feel loss. One day we never will. But, in this life, beyond all the other emotions, grief plagues our daily lives because we are bound by time. We cannot, on this side of heaven, delay it’s passing for even one moment. So we are anxious, we worry, and we get sad and sentimental. We think back to how we wish we had noticed more details; how we wish we had spent more time with those we love; how we wish we had been present.

But really, while we were never meant to experience loss until sin entered the world, that doesn’t mean we were never meant to experience change. The seasons must have still happened in the garden for the plants to grow. But nothing would ever be gone. Nothing would ever die. Now we know change, and with it, finite endings. The seasons still change: winter still comes, and with it, reminders of my great-grandma who passed on Christmas day.

I must remind myself that our good shepherd knows we must move. Change must happen. If he keeps me in the same pasture forever the grass will be fully eaten and this sheep will die. And so, I reflect that even if I never come back to this pasture, if I never again enter this room, if I truly am done with Freshman year, if I one day never go back to Lanse, it is because my Shepherd has moved me on. He knows that I have received everything from that pasture, and I must be pushed to new land where there are new blessings to be found.

I won’t ever move on from this grief. There’s no way to end grief until connections in the brain are broken, and memories forgotten. But these ones are too strong. My grandparents, Lanse—it will all live on in my head forever. But now that I understand why, I am more comfortable with it. I also consider that my brain will not struggle to make sense of these strong connections forever. One day I will be reunited with the people who formed them. On that day, and evermore, I will be able to experience change without the bitter companion of grief. Never again will there be an ending.