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Behind every loss of hope, is loss itself. Loss of hope is almost the final of all losses. So, what then is loss?

Loss happens when we lose anything that is dear to us. It can be a person, a cause, a belief, a hope, a dream, a family, a part of ourselves. Losses happen every day. They are a natural part of our lives. We lose an umbrella; we lose our bearings and we lose touch with old friends and acquaintances. Most losses we recognise as inevitable, like those from aging and the seasons.

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However, some losses shake us at the very core of who we are. They devastate us and at times even destroy us. We lose part of ourselves. We lose part of who we would have been or become if that event or circumstance hadn’t occurred. Sometimes, we too lose our innocence or our purity. Sometimes we face evil for the very first time and can no longer believe and exist in a make-believe land of fairy tales.

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But what is the greatest loss at the heart of them all? The loss of being held in some way in a loving embrace of some kind. The loss of being part of something bigger and better than ourselves alone. The loss of the space and freedom to become who we could truly have been without that dream or hope being snatched from us, out of our grasp and reach now, forever. That is the greatest loss of all. To no longer know the love we once knew, the hope we once had and the dreams we once dreamt.

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With loss always comes sadness. The happy go lucky child we all were when we came into the world has forever gone. Or has she or he? Have they truly disappeared or have they instead retreated into a part of ourselves we have lost touch with? Perhaps all that fun, laughter, spontaneity, playfulness and innocence hasn’t gone for good. Perhaps it is just hidden away, in order to protect it from any further hurt, shame or loss.

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People grieve most for all they believe they have lost and can never ever find again. A happy home life, a loving husband or wife, a child, a career, a destination, a home, a community, a peace and contentment, a joy, perspective and understanding. It is as if they have entered a world of fog and lost sight of all the wonders of the world they were once acquainted with. Their lives become mundane and monotonous because everything is shrouded in a fog where colour, meaning and vision have all been tarnished or diminished in some way. It is as if they have been robbed of all they held most dear.

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They often don’t know who the thief was or why he or she chose the home of their heart to burgle. But they did. Now their heart grieves for all they have lost and once held so dear. There is no police force one can call on to chase after and find the burglar, restore what was stolen and bring them to justice. And that is often the very hardest loss to deal with, the loss of justice.

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The loss of justice and feelings of injustice and unfairness are at the heart of the greatest losses. Natural losses, like the leaves falling off the trees in autumn are never grieved over in the same way as a tree cut down before it had a chance to become all it might have been and become. Those trees can be people, but they can also represent ourselves. We can accept the loss of our leaves as we know that a part of us is being prepared to become even more than we were in this season. We know the leaves will grow once again next spring and by then we will have grown further into the tree we are to become. So, in these losses, we can be philosophical. We can accept that although we had to withdraw some cash from our safety deposit box of life, next year we will be putting even more back in. These losses seem in some way more natural and acceptable.

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However, the losses we find the hardest to bear are when someone comes along and decides, for whatever reason, to take a swing with an axe at the trunk of who we are. They cut into us. Sometimes they timber off a part of us, a twig or a small branch. However sometimes it is one of the main branches upon which everything else grows.

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In an instant, we see our beautiful branch covered in spring leaves fall, which a minute before had adorned us. Now cut off, it crashes onto the ground right next to us. We have lost that part of ourselves forever. No one can glue back on that branch. It must now be discarded. Yet it is too painful, as there was no time to say goodbye to it and thank it for all the joy and beauty it had brought to our life. There was nothing we could do to protect it. We weren’t able to fight off the one who cared so little for us that he cut away and destroyed that part of us. Now there is no way that that part of us can ever be restored.

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Instead, as it lays there, detached from us and now discarded by the axe man, we can only look on helpless and distraught. Slowly, all we can do over time, is to watch the leaves die and then the branch wither too and die. Everything we had hoped for from that branch has died with it. We have lost an integral part of ourselves and there is absolutely nothing we can do to get that part back. Or is there?

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Although that branch has forever gone and is no longer attached to us as it once was, we can make something from that discarded wood. We can choose to carve something special from this part of ourselves. It has gone in the way we once knew. However, once it has had time to dry out, we can take it and carve it into something very precious. It is only as a result of that loss that we have this wood to carve. This carving then becomes a gift we can give or share with others. Instead of it being part of us, it can still sit next to us and when people come and visit us, as well as seeing all our other branches, they can take this now carved branch in their hands and with great tenderness and concern, regard the beauty now carved into every part of it. If that branch had never been cut down, this carving could never have been forthcoming.

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Eventually all trees must die. That is a loss that none of us can ever put off forever. However, we can leave behind the carvings. Isn’t it ironic that in trying to hold onto all the bits of ourself, that once dead, we can carve nothing further onto them? The only legacies that might remain are the carvings we made from each part of ourselves that we were so heartbroken to have lost during our lives. The injustice of those greatest losses will then have been turned into something we can leave behind proclaiming that we turned our sorrow into joy, our lamenting into laughter and our mourning into dancing.

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It will say that despite the unfairness and injustice meted out to us, we have not only overcome our loss but turned something that was dead into a new life that lives on way past our lives as trees. It says, we have overcome the axeman and have shamed him by bringing forth beauty from ashes. What he meant for our harm has produced fruit that others might enjoy eating from. It is out of the darkness that new life has come forth.

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 All new life comes initially from darkness. The universe burst forth into life from darkness. The seed in the ground, once broken open, produces a new life that could never have been released without its willingness to die. The baby in the womb lives in total darkness for at least nine months, unseen and unheard, but forever being transformed into a life that will bless the world he or she will come into and touch. Without the mother’s willingness to let that life depart from her, this new life could never have truly begun to live.

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Sometimes, it is our greatest losses that will transform us the most. We can choose how to react to those losses. We can remain grieving, angry, bitter and full of resentment, because we have been forever changed and we had no say or choice in what happened to us. Or we can eventually accept that life as we once knew it and hoped for it to be, has gone and the amputated branch of who we once were has gone forever. All we can do to honour that branch is to carve something of worth, beauty and meaning from it and into it. In that way we can keep it close to us forever, that part of ourself. We do not have to see it wither, die and get covered over and eaten by insects on the forest floor. This way we can rescue it from the fate of decaying into nothingness and make it into something we could never have had, if it had remained a branch on the tree of our being.

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