Loss as a Concept

be·reft/biˈreft/Adjective

1. Deprived of or lacking something 

2. (of a person) Lonely and abandoned, esp. through someone's death or departure.

There is no time off in this program to grieve. It isn't that people aren't sympathetic, there just isn't any room to add time for a student to gather themselves. Last post, I mentioned that I should be back on track as long as no other life-altering events occurred. Well, remind me next time to keep my mouth shut. Last week I lost one of my firmest supporters and one of the people whose influence helped me get to this program: my grandfather. He was a scientist. He loved and actively sought knowledge - even knowledge without direct purpose.

The only word that I could find to describe how I feel is bereft. I am not "enraged," I am not "despairing," but I also can't seem to grieve. Instead, I feel "deprived and lacking something."

Some other cohort members have expressed the sense that one specific goal of this program is the active attempt to "tear us down" so that they can build something better out of us. I haven't felt this way about the program. Instead, I have described it as a type of socialization. They (the powers that be) were having us experience what it really is to think for a living - to be an academic.

Right now, though, I feel that my life is tearing me down. And school is preventing me from addressing that. I'm balancing on a tightrope, someone just knocked one of my feet out from under me, and there is NO NET.

I quit my job, I live thousands of miles from my family, and one of the people who believed I could do this isn't here now. I am bereft of my confidence. I am bereft of my certainty. I am even bereft of my ability to have a really good freak out. I have never run home for help because I've never needed that. But what if I never needed help because I always knew that if I did need it, it was there? Does that make any sense?! And, I don't even have time to think this through, because I have to think about other things - it is week 8!

This week, also, as my life has been assaulted, I have come to some conclusions about the program. I was wrong. It isn't socialization, it is a type of destruction. I have spent a year investigating concepts and theories. I came in with a pretty good idea of my question - and now that I know more, that's gone. I have no research question. I have less of a belief in my own knowledge on my topic. I feel naked and uncertain.

What comes from bereavement? Nearing the end of the first year, having lost the support of a loved one, my certainty of purpose, and my belief in my research ideas, what is there to be learned from all of it? I want someone to tell me that I will gain knowledge from this. My grandfather believed in science as a way to attain knowledge. I believe that too. Implicit in that belief is that knowledge will lead to understanding. But today, I am not sure that the rigorous application of methodical investigation techniques will help me understand.

And I am bereft.