As I drove my car on the streets of Los Angeles this morning, I felt a tremendous loss. I’ve spent nearly every morning I’ve lived in this metropolis, or at least every morning that I’m in a car, listening to KCRW (89.9)'s Morning Becomes Eclectic with Jason Bentley and/or KROQ (106.7)'s Kevin and Bean morning show. My taste in music became way cooler thanks to Jason Bentley and Kevin and Bean kept me laughing when I might otherwise be crying or wanting to fight another driver. I even had the pleasure of meeting all of these gentlemen in person over the years and found them to be as delightful as I’d imagined listening to their voices.
Yesterday was Bean's last day on the Kevin and Bean show and earlier this summer, Jason Bentley, left Morning Becomes Eclectic, so today I'm left with a massive void in my commutes. This hole speaks highly to the power of the arts and creativity as a whole to move, inspire, and often save lives. But that’s not what I want to address in this. I want to look more closely at grief and loss.
I’m this strange paradox in that I usually embrace, welcome, and need enough change to feel okay in life, but I’m also incredibly loyal. So when I find someone or something I like (Which is probably too many things.), I want it to last forever.
Of course, life is constant change and nothing lasts forever. I know that. But that doesn’t mean we don’t feel sad when something we love changes or ends. Sadness is a great indicator that something or someone is important to us. Still sadness sucks. It doesn’t feel good. We don’t usually like it (Although, I can get down with a solid ugly cry now and again.). But it’s part of life and if we resist it, we’re left with a hole in our hearts.
This is what I have to eat now that Twix ice cream no longer exists!
This is why mourning is so important, even though it’s not something we talk much about in this larger Western culture. We think of mourning as that thing that happens after a death or the end of a romantic relationship. But mourning is a constant process as we’re always losing things that are important (to varying degrees) to us.
I still haven’t gotten over sour apple replacing lime in the standard Skittle bag. Or that Breyer’s got rid of their Twix ice cream. Or randomly replacing Aunt Viv on “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” without a word. Like we wouldn’t notice?!
Of course, there’s a range to loss. Give me sour apple as the green Skittle over the death of a loved one any day. But regardless of its scale, when we lose something or someone important to us, we can’t hide away from it pretending it didn’t happen or that we’re just fine. We have to properly mourn or else we won’t move forward.
There’s no one way to mourn. The once psychological standard for mourning, the Stages of Grief, aren’t even as cut and dry as they once seemed. Talk about mourning mourning if we want to get metta.
Grief is a process and we all handle it in different ways. But here are some things I’ve found to be helpful, regardless if the McDonald’s ice cream machine once again broke down or you’re going through a breakup:
Feel the Feelings
Yep, I’m going to go there. Again. Feel the heck out of them, no matter how sad or angry you are, so you can process them and move on from them. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck there, feeling like crap and never moving forward in life. Think about that uncle in the basement of your grandparent’s house. He didn’t feel his feelings.
Have Patience
Now you’re feeling your feelings. All of them. The sadness, the anger, the guilt. Then, you feel happy again and start to move forward. Yes, you did it! Wait, now you’re right back to not being able to get out of bed in the morning and the pain is as fresh as it was that first day. What the eff?!
Saying goodbye is never easy.
Yeah, that happens. The feelings come and go. All the feelings. The ones we like and the ones we don’t. All the time actually. But if you’re actually feeling them, they’ll come back less often and won’t last as long. They may never entirely go away, depending on how much you cared for that something or someone, but it will always be better than if you decided to not feel them at all. Pain and joy are far superior to numbness or a constant dull ache.
Search for Meaning
Lime Skittles probably tasted too much like the yellow lemon ones so they had to make it a different flavor. I still haven’t figured out what happened with the Twix ice cream and I no joke, sent Breyer’s an email at the time. And here’s a theory on Aunt Viv.
Of course, there are situations in which this is far more difficult than others. The death of a child or anything/anyone innocent. Betrayal. Abuse. Searching for meaning doesn’t mean you condone anyone’s actions or a specific situation. Finding or creating meaning is simply a path to acceptance that allows for the recognition that there are many perspectives on the same situation.
There’s a reason many who are religious say things like, “They’re in a better place now” when someone passes. It’s part of the mourning process for them and that belief brings them some peace. When all else fails, see if you can appreciate that you’re capable of caring deeply, which means you aren’t a socio or psychopath. I think we’d all agree that’s a positive. Also, sometimes the simple recognition that we don’t know everything about how the world works can be comforting.
Take Action
This might involve ritual. When someone dies, we have memorial services, burials, and other rituals depending on culture and religion to make us feel better. I’m partial to the sky burial myself. Ritual forces us to face the loss head on. There’s no avoidance.
Burning things can be a healing ritual, but be careful and keep it legal.
Unfortunately, we don’t have set practices for other losses.
So it’s important to create them for ourselves. With breakups I’ve seen people burn presents from their exes or their exes things (Be careful with this!), tear up photos, eat ice cream, cast spells. While some of these might have been distractions, they also allowed the person to process their emotions and face reality. Drinking copious amounts of alcohol is not a helpful ritual.
With a loss of any kind, we can memorialize its importance. I suppose that’s actually what I’m doing here. Writing or speaking some meaningful words, creating a piece of art dedicated to the loss, or some other form of creative expression that allows you to express feelings and mark the significance can go a long way in the healing process.
Physical movement, in and of itself, can also be helpful. Run a race in their or its honor or simply run until you’ve exhausted the feelings. Or box. Boxing is a great way to release painful emotions in a positive way.
Action can also take the form of work toward solving a problem that caused the unfortunate situation. Like when I wrote an email letting Breyer’s know Twix ice cream was the best ever and I wanted it back. So write companies, politicians, and journalists, donate money, start a non-profit, protest, etc. Enacting change can help you feel like the loss wasn’t in vain.
Action also helps us to create purpose again in life, which helps tremendously with healing.
So, while it might seem silly, today, and however long I need to, I’ll mourn the losses of Los Angeles morning talk radio. I’ve shed my tears. Seriously. And can’t promise I won’t again, but that’s helped already. I’m writing this homage to them, as well as thinking further about grief and loss. And I’ll continue to listen to both shows as I still enjoy them and the people on them. In time, the hole in my heart will be filled. And I’ll always have the decade of memories. As well as the cheesy saying, “It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” Mic drop.