When a mapmaker becomes list in grief

She is a cartographer. She designs maps, develops software that creates maps; and she knows her way around every kind of topography there is.

Whether it’s flat, empty terrains, wild jungle landscapes or urban city sites, streets lined with lookalike buildings, this woman can find her way. She has achieved advanced degrees, even wrote a dissertation on the subject; she manages cartography projects for a highly-specialized cooperation. North from south, east to west, she can find any location and she can get others there. Only now something unexpected has happened to her, this maker of maps. For the first time in her life, she is lost.

Her husband has died and she is left with unexplored tracks, foreign to her. She has inherited the care of his mother, the parenting of their young adult son, and a new life marked by the dreaded sign, widow. She now must navigate mounds of paperwork, mountains of memories, rivers of dreams; and she must do it alone.

There is no question that she is smart, that she has excellent coping skills, and has acquired numerous resources to steer her through any crisis. She will even admit to knowing that this unchartered territory loomed before her as she figured out the future while sitting in doctors’ offices and waiting rooms.

This expedition delivered no real surprising twists or turns. And yet, that’s the funny thing about grief, you can have a clear direction, you can draw or download readable maps as well as accumulate navigational tools in preparation for the journey of loss but still nothing really prepares you for the long road of bereavement and the unmarked path of being left alone.

I know that it is hard for everybody. No one, no matter how prepared or equipped a person might be, escapes the utter disorientation of death. No one finds a short cut or even a way around the loneliness, the sorrow, the despair.

“How do I get out of here?” she asks, the desperation creeping into her voice. “How do I find my way out of this?” And the others sitting near her, the others also lost, those few who found their way to this support group, know of nothing else to do but offer her their companionship.

“Here,” they seem to say, bearing no compass or reliable GPS manual, “Stand here with me or just sit and wait; there’s really nowhere else to go.” And I, the one they have come to seeking guidance, watch them realizing that grief becomes the wilderness where we shall all, with or without a map, be left to wander.

This story was originally published May 19, 2015 at 6:13 PM with the headline "When a mapmaker becomes list in grief."