Horcruxes

“Keep living.”

That’s all she gave me.

There was no dramatic monologue or timely poetic revelation, like those we so often see in movies or read in books. My wife and I never sat down and had a conversation about what she wanted after she was gone. She was dying and we knew it; talking about death gave it power it didn’t deserve.

So, we lived. We invested what little time we had left into living, not dying.

But in our final weeks in the hospital, she offered that single directive, one succinct admonition to sustain me the rest of my days:

“Don’t shut the world out and become a bitter old man. Keep living.“

Kailen and I had many things in common, but one of the most important is that we were both prolific readers. And in spite of a hectic schedule, I still try to maintain that quality, averaging about a book-a-week.

My favorite author is C.S. Lewis, my favorite book is Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, but when it comes to sheer creativity and prodigious imagination, no one compares to J.K. Rowling. In my humble opinion, her Harry Potter series will go down as the greatest story of its generation, and should, by all accounts, be placed alongside timeless classics like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Much like those great works of Tolkien and Lewis, Harry Potter is deeply allegorical; every character and every plot twist could be symbolic of something deeper, an empiric element of a grander narrative.

Basically, I love the Harry Potter books.

But it wasn’t until recently that I realized their application to grief.

Though love and loss certainly play a role in the story, this particular application has very little to do with the narrative. In fact, it’s not about Harry or any of the other heroes.

It’s about the villain – Voldemort.

In his futile attempt to attain immortality, Voldemort uses magic to split his soul into seven fragments, each of which he preserves in relatively common objects: a ring, a diary, and a crown, among others.

Though not intentional and certainly not villainous, this is essentially what happens when we lose someone we love.

In the wake of tragedy, in the depths of our grief, we assemble horcruxes all around us. It’s as if, when our loved ones passed on, they left pieces of themselves behind, little fragments of their souls forever preserved in the most unlikely places. We find them in the smiling eyes of our pets, in the subtle scents buried inside a well-worn blanket, or scribbled in the margin of a dusty old book.

We don’t make them. We don’t choose them. But they’re there.

All around us.

I still see them everywhere – the bookshelf, the coffee maker, the Kitchen-Aid mixer I bought her on our last Christmas together, the notes pinned on the fridge, the empty slot in the toothbrush holder, and of course, Rupp (pictured above).

They’re painful and inescapable, but if we really stop and think about it, we’re grateful for them. Because they keep them alive. Even if it’s just for us, even if it’s fictitious, the horcruxes seem to immortalize our lost loved one, giving us something to hold onto when the grief is simply too much to bear.

But there are 2 very important lessons we need to learn about these horcruxes, both of which are crucial for the progression of our grief:

1) Your loved one’s greatest horcrux is YOU.

When it comes to keeping the memory of your loved one alive, no book, blanket, or pet could ever compare to you. Though we’d never choose it, grief gives us the opportunity to forever honor the memory of those we’ve lost.

For me, I honor Kailen by granting her dying wish: I daily choose to keep living. There are days when it’s not easy. In fact, it’s never easy. But by choosing hope, joy, and life in the midst of the pain, just as she did, her memory lives on.

And it will forever be part of me. Just as your loved one will forever be a part of you.

2) You are more than a horcrux.

If you’re still in the throes of early-grief, you probably aren’t ready to hear this, so feel free to skip through to the end. But for those that have grieved for years or even decades, there is something you must know:

Your tragedy doesn’t define you. As I’ve said so many times before, you are not bad just because something bad happened to you.

You are much more than a fragment of the past. You have a present, and most importantly, you have a future.

There will come a day when it’s time to put the horcruxes away.

Don’t misunderstand me – you will never put away the memory of your loved one; they’re immortalized in your heart and mind, forever stamped into your being.

But eventually, like me, you’ll see that Kailen had it figured out all along.

You’ll never “get over” your loss. You may never understand it or come to terms with it. And you certainly don’t have to “move on” from it. But you do have to keep going.

In our final days together, she offered me only 2 words. And now I realize she knew they were all I would need:

Keep living.

A fellow journeyer,

Bryan