The Struggle for Closure

Closure.

When a traumatic, life-altering event occurs, many of us emerge from the numbing ether of shock seeking a thing called “closure”. Up until now, I thought I understood this concept — and in an abstract sense, I probably did. But in the wake of certain more recent events, I realized I’m conflicted. 

So I looked up the definition of this word, “closure”, because I understand the need to seek it - I just don’t know how many of us find it. 

I think many of us really mostly struggle with finding a path that gets us there.

According to Dictionarycom, “closure" is defined as “the act of closing, an end or conclusion.” That sounds neat, tidy, simple enough. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a feeling that a bad experience (such as a divorce or the death of a family member) has ended and that you can start to live again in a calm and normal way…” That sounds altogether implausible - like a set up for failure. Sensible enough on paper, a bit out of reach in real life application.

I searched some more. 

According to Gestalt psychology (the study of our mind’s ability to perceive meaning amidst chaos), there is actually a Law of Closure which can be illustrated as a person’s ability to fill in the gaps of an incomplete object, thus rendering it whole and organized. In other words, when faced with something that is obviously incomplete, our mind struggles to combine whatever is available in order to complete the image or object.

That third explanation feels more…accessible, familiar to me, even.

A friend defines “closure” as the ability to accept something for what it is, and not what it was. She regards it as an intrinsic phenomenon, not externally driven. And more recently, a professional colleague described to me his definition of closure, which is the conviction of having done all that he needed to do to finalize something on his end, which speaks to a sense of accountability. I like both of these definitions, certainly as far as they can be applied to circumstances, projects, or maybe even Life in general.

But death?

Death.

How do we get closure from death? Death is the uninvited guest to the gathering. It’s that terrible, inevitable equalizer that cannot be denied though it is often something we strive to ignore. Most of us have some level of personal experience with it, having lost a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a relative, a friend…some, even shouldering the unspeakable burden of losing a child. For me, one of the familiar things about death is that it makes me want to hit a “pause” button, in part, to collect all the scattered thoughts that keep looping over and over as I try to make sense of things; in another way, to halt any forward motion or eventual progression that I know must take place despite the fact that the absence of the departed makes such a concept seem completely profane - unreal, even. 

And so, going back to that Gestalt psychology and Law of Closure, I feel myself pressing the pause button, mostly in order to give myself time to try to “fill in the gaps of an incomplete object or image” - which, in the case of death, is that terrible, immutable void created by the absence of someone who was once with us. 

I suppose if we’re fortunate, most of us will live our lives relegating the specter of death to the back of the line or behind the veil that shields our thoughts from the anxious contemplation of the unknown. But once we do experience that gaping void of human loss - and it is inevitable that we will - we must then come to terms with everything about this now incomplete picture, including how we will go about rendering it “whole” again - an impossibility, where death is concerned. 

This makes the idea of closure almost…ridiculously out of reach. 

And so, no - I don’t believe we can ever achieve closure when we lose a loved one, at least not in the Merriam-Webster sense. We’re tasked with redefining “calm” and “normal”, when in fact, it is the very struggle for closure that keeps our loved one’s presence real - more real in fact, than their absence. This is the painful paradox of seeking closure, or being expected by others to achieve it, which by all the aforementioned definitions, would have us believe that closure is a goal and the struggle, an obstacle.

I posit that no, it is the very struggle itself that opens the portal to our movement and helps us to complete the incomplete. It is really the struggle itself that informs our grieving and hopefully our healing, and this struggle is a circular loop without boundaries, answering only to us, and we, to it. 

It is in fact this struggle, perceived by many as an obstacle, that is the path. 

And it is therefore somewhere along this looping path, for those of us circumambulating it, that we find our own version of closure.