No Such Thing As Closure

There is closure on real estate deals, businesses deals, etc. but there is no such thing as closure on a relationship. Closure means the end of a deal. It’s done, over, completed. All conditions have been met. No more expectations that need to be fulfilled. Closure relates to deals, not life, not relationships.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no end to the relationship that Lorna and I had. Yes, our physical relationship on this earth has ended, but our RELATIONSHIP has not ended, nor will it. She is very much alive to me right now, even though I can’t see her, feel her, talk with her or touch her. It is me that is not as alive as she is. I will die, someday, whenever that will be. Then, I will join her in a new life that will never end. Then, our relationship will continue, in a different manner than it was here, but it will continue. I have that promise. Without that promise, there is no hope. It is more than a hope. Once you know the truth, it sets you free. Free to know that I will be with Lorna again, no question. Different, but still in a personal relationship with her, walking with her, talking with her, experiencing an amazing life WITH her! And there will be no more intermission, no sorrow of having to say “see you later!”

Many people say that a funeral is the “closure” for the family. For me, it wasn’t. Maybe for others, it is an end of that relationship, but for those of us who have lost that most important person in our lives, there can be no closure. Yes, we “move forward”, we learn to “manage” without that person in our daily lives, but that person, that love, is still very much a part of our daily lives. They will never leave, but now it’s called “grief”. It is now a part of life, part of what we deal with every single day, multiple times throughout the day. At first, it is overwhelming, like the waves of the ocean when you are not used to them. Later on, we learn how to see them coming and can handle them in public, but in private, we still often have our times of being swallowed by them. When things go wrong during the day, I find myself stealing away to have my alone time and cry out to Lorna, without the comfort of hearing her reassuring words that it will be ok. I have to imagine that, and yes, I can hear her telling me that.

Sometimes we get caught up in the rhetoric of what other people say that you should have “closure” on. For me, personally, I will never “close” on the relationship I had with Lorna, I can’t, it’s not possible. I am the person I am because of a 40 year relationship with Lorna. However, in the past 2 years and 10 months since she has been gone, I have had trouble with holding on to myself, the way she would’ve wanted me to be. This happens when everything that was “normal” in my life gets totally disrupted. What was “our” normal, disappeared.

While in many ways I feel like I am starting over, it is a “moving forward”, not without Lorna, but with her in a different way. Again, I am who I am because of the love from her and the desire I had to be the best I could be for her. I need to keep going forward being the best that I can be as if she was still here. I will get there, in time.

Closure should never exist in relationships, because we should never “close” a relationship with anyone.

“Love you to infinity and beyond” was the line she would always say to me just before going to sleep pretty well every night. There is no closure in that. Nor will there ever be.

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