There are
other losses that are not spoken about very openly, despite the means for
communication that are continually available to us. We as a society seem to be
at a loss for words when it comes to truly describing how we feel about losing
our jobs, our identities, our pride or self-esteem, about how it feels to be
displaced or frozen out of the ‘good company’ at work or in school, or simply ignored
by our workplaces and schools. We talk about bullying in society and that it
should stop, but it doesn’t. People who are bullied and harassed experience a
loss of self-esteem and happiness that is difficult for them to deal with and
that may affect them for the rest of their lives, and they may grieve silently
for those losses. We are told to deal with constant change in our workplaces,
and while most of us adapt to the new changes and patterns, it is neither as
fast as management wishes nor as successful as they might hope. ‘Something’s
lost but something’s gained, in living every day’, as Joni Mitchell sings. That’s
true, but sometimes the gains don’t outweigh the losses. I would argue that it
depends upon what is lost and what is gained. Nonetheless, we cannot stand
still and we must live in the now. So we are forced to deal with loss and
change.
Our sorrows
are often right under our surfaces, but we are silent about bringing them to
light. I was at a summer party recently, and I met a young woman who told me
about her father’s quiet sorrow; he was born in another country and came here
to live many years ago, probably as a political refugee. He married and had a
family, but he never stopped missing his birth country. For her young age, she
was deeply reflective, and her love and understanding for her father were clear.
Her description of his sadness was something I could understand viscerally. For
I too miss my birth country; it is a tangible feeling of sorrow that I carry
around with me, and that I have done a good job of keeping under my surface
until now. But I cannot do that any longer. At the same party, I met a fellow
expat, who told me that he hated America and that he would never go back there
to live. I could never say the same. I love my country the way I love a person—we
are intertwined. I couldn’t tell you why it is this way; it just is after many years of living away from my birth country. So
I could not understand my fellow expat, although I registered his words and
opinions. It made me think of my grandparents who left Italy for America in the
early 1900s and who never once returned there, as they could not afford to do
so. What must it have been like to know that you would never see your father,
mother, or siblings again, unless they followed you to America? Loss and sorrow
on both sides. How their sorrows must have defined their lives, especially when
their lives took a downturn during the Great Depression when my grandfather
lost his pharmacy. I know that their sorrows colored their later lives because
my father told me a lot about his family life and how his father suffered. Not
all immigrants miss their birth countries; I know several people who have moved
from Europe to the USA, who have become successful and who would never move
back to their birth countries. But I also know immigrants to the USA who miss
their birth countries regardless of their successes. It is an individual thing—how
we deal with loss and the sorrows that accompany it. But it is good to talk
about it sometimes, because you find out that you are not as alone in this life
as you may think.
