Maybe Closure Isn’t Necessary After All

vol. 7 | going gently

via Austin Chan on Unsplash

I saw a post on the ‘gram last year that read, “One day you will carry [your child] on your hip, then set them down, and never pick them up that way again.” It was a sobering thought and I scrambled to remember when I had last picked up Lucy. Probably sometime in our old house after she fell asleep in our bed instead of her own, but I cannot know for sure. Maybe it’s better that way.

I have a tendency to want to tidy up messy human experiences in bows. I like to feel certain of the beginning and end, which is probably why I became a writer and why, to this day, I harbor an intense dislike for literary fiction. More important than the mere knowledge of when something starts or ends, however, is the experience of being fully engaged, body and mind, in that moment. I feel a visceral need to both acknowledge it and live it well.

As you can imagine, such a need want means the pressure is on during major life transitions. I felt it during my high school graduation, at the end of studying abroad, when I graduated from college, on our wedding day, and when both our kids were born. Even milestones like the last time I breastfed Theo, signaling the end of my nursing journey altogether, were heavy with the burden of meaning. I am nothing if not a sentimental feeler.

But sometimes you don’t know a moment is the end until you look back. Sometimes, that has to be enough. If you try to grab for it, desperate for a redo or in an effort to imbue the moment with the weight of your emotions, it robs you of your actual experience of the end. It creates a counterfeit, and nobody likes a fake.