FIND CLOSURE YOU TELL ME, YOU TELL THEM, YOU TELL US!



Closure, the word which many love, some confuse, and some just do not want to hear. It means various things to various persons and is applied differently in various situations. I get so tired of hearing people say "its time to stop grieving" "its time for Jane or Mary to get over it" "why are you punishing yourself?" If you think I am going to talk about closure in the traditional sense then think again, if you believe I am going to say "oh it happned lets move unto the next experience, then you need to move on and do not continue reading. For me, true closure is to forever remember and to educate others with that remembrance.



Do not get all high up in here, and get me wrong, closure has its positive benefits to the enhancing of an individuals life for the better and it can also be a tool for fear and ignorance to remain alive, for conflicts to stand and memories to fade.



" We tell these stories because perhaps we know that not to listen, not to want to know, would lead you to indifference, and indifference is never an answer. Whoever hates, hates everybody. Whoever kills, kills more than his victims." Elie Wiesel



This is just me talking out loud. All because I just cannot keep silent (smile). Sometimes I make sense, other times its just words flowing in no order.. Lol. If remembering is a crime, then we all are guilty, the world is guilty, life is guilty, for life is about remembering for in doing so we do not forget, we do not make the same mistakes, and we keep it ever before us not to taunt us but to edify us.



People love to remember the good things, the birth of a child, but want to forget the pain of the actual delivery, they love to speak about the wonderful wedding and the kisses but would like the wife to forget about the numerous times that husband raped her and brutalized her, we love to hear about the great passes and graduation excellence but we do not want others to rehearse the many nights of pain and the process to accomplish that excellence.



We want to hear the child speak about Christmas and birthday experiences but we become uncomfortable when that said child begins to speak about the horrendous abuse they had to endure. We love to hear about the success after cancer but do not like to hear about the actual experience of pain. We are beings who love comfort and anything which begins to make us uncomfortable we immediately have a problem with it.



Anything which causes us to remember pain, or a loved one in pain, or placing our minds around why bad things happen, anything which brings up trauma we prefer not to hear or to see or feel, and basically in many ways the mind sets into a mode to protect the individual from pain, displeasure and discomfort. There is something called disassociation, it simply means the mind disassociating or blocking the experience of pain to lessen the trauma which the person is presently going through. The person experiences the pain it is real, the scars of the pain is evident but the mind sets in a mode of self preservation. Problem, you still have to deal with the effects of the pain and the trauma which is devasting.



People find themselves behaving in certain ways, doing certain things, manifesting certain behaviours which may be implosive or explosive, and acting out and cannot understand why, however when they begin to dig deep they are faced with a traumatic experience which the mind suppressed. You see dissociation is a safety net only for the hour.



To the mother who have lost her child should she forget I say never and to anyone who says to her its time to stop grieving its time to get over it, you are definitely out of place. To the child who experienced a traumatic event, yes, there must be a resolution to that experience but its not your place or mine to say "get over it now" " stop rehearsing it move on" the world needs to know and hear this child.



To the man who was raped as a child and no one knew and he makes a decision to break his silence, how dare you tell him "forget about it, that was a long time ago you have a family now move on" you are cheapening the memory and the validity of his pain and justifying the abuser. To the parent whose child took his or her own life, who are you to tell them forget and move on, if we forget the dead its a kin to killing them a second time, you are the one who needs to deal with it.



Closure you say, what really is closure when even history reminds us constantly, what is closure worth when victims cannot speak, if closure is to forget and cheapens the validity of my experience, if it is to make me voiceless, emotionless, make my memory banal, sterile, if it is to justify the hand of the abuser or give credence to the disease which took a life then I rather remember, I rather never find closure.



To those who say "Sherna forget about it" I say to you read these quotes from one of my favourite authors.



" But is there hope? Is there hope in memory? There must be. Without hope memory would be morbid and sterile. Without memory, hope would be empty of meaning, and above all, empty of gratitude."



" We must remember, we must remember the times of cruelty and suffering when in the darkest of all places, in man's world, day after day, hour after hour, the killers killed, the victims perished."



"All the rivers run to the sea, days come and go, generations vanish, others are born, remembrance ceremonies follow one another -- and hatred is still alive, and some of us, the remnant of the remnant, wonder with the poet Paul Celan: who will bear witness for the witness, who will remember what some of us tried to relate about a time of fear and darkness when so many, too many victims felt abandoned, forgotten, unworthy of compassion and solidarity? Who will answer questions whose answers the dead took with them? Who will feel qualified enough and strong enough, faithful enough to confront their fiery legacy? What was and remains clear to some of us, here and elsewhere, is the knowledge that if we forget them, we too shall be forgotten.



But is remembrance enough? What does one do with the memory of agony and suffering? Memory has its own language, its own texture, its own secret melody, its own archeology and its own limitations: it too can be wounded, stolen and shamed; but it is up to us to rescue it and save it from becoming cheap, banal, and sterile.



To remember means to lend an ethical dimension to all endeavors and aspirations." ~Elie Wiesel

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