Closure is an unusual thing. It is elusive in part because it is difficult to define. When you have a moment in your life which leaves you with more questions than answers most people don’t even know how to begin. Some people are sure what closure means. Maybe it’s an apology, an explanation, the return of someone, a verdict, reaching a goal, etc. Sometimes you think an event will provide closure only to find that the feelings don’t go away even after that event has occurred. Now what?
How long will it take?
A while ago my mother gave me a call to tell me about a woman she had met at church. It was a holiday weekend and the woman was by herself. My mother being the social butterfly that she is naturally struck up a conversation. The woman was supposed to go away for the weekend with her family, but decided she really just wanted to be alone for the weekend and go to church. It was the 34th anniversary of the death of her son. Naturally my mother asked what happened and was told he died in a helicopter accident.
That’s when the pieces came together. I actually found her son in the wreckage of the helicopter when I was in high school. She just wanted to know if her son suffered. My mother didn’t arrive at the scene until after the fire department so she only got my account, but that second hand account was probably enough to provide some closure.
Now this was not a chance encounter of people who lived thousands of miles away. We lived in the same town and her daughter and I were one grade apart in school. As a kid I had been in their family’s shop on many occasions. At the time I was bombarded with TV and newspaper interviews so the woman knew who found the crash site. still, in 34 years she did not reach out for answers. If she wanted to she could have walked to my house, but she didn’t.
All too often people have closure within their grasp but don’t take the initiative. They wait for closure to come to them. Or at least get a message in church.
What if it’s not what you think it is?
With the exception of Apollo 13, the missions to the moon all reached their goal. Strangely for the astronauts, this realization of a dream was almost traumatic for many of them. What do you do after you’ve done the biggest thing anyone has ever dreamed of? Now most of us will never be in that position, but most of us have been in a situation where we accomplished a goal and it didn’t feel the way we thought it would.
Reaching goals and reaching closure are not exactly the same thing. Goals are easier to see definitive end points. Closure is subjective. Both imply some sense of accomplishment or desired result. Closure also usually implies that the events in motion were started by events beyond your control. You are looking for an ending but not necessarily moving towards an ending. In closure situations you are probably guided externally by social norms of what closure should look like. You finally get to where you think you are supposed to be, and what you find is different than expected.
What to make of it
Feelings of failure, confusion and depression are not uncommon when closure takes a different direction. In many cases, the reality is that this isn’t actually the end, it just brings you to the beginning of where you are supposed to be. Most people think closure is supposed to bring them back from the detour that their life has taken so they can pickup where they left off.
In reality the whole experience was a detour to somewhere different. This is where people really get stuck. Some are locked into what they think was supposed to happen and they continue on the detour which now goes no where. Maybe you’ve seen someone going through the same steps over and over and getting no where. They didn’t recognize the exit when they arrived at it. I think it was Henry Ford that said “most people miss opportunity because it is dressed in overalls and disguised as work”.
Closure is about recognizing that you have arrived at a place in your life where you are supposed to do something. It’s not about rationalizing the events that got you there. In many respect closure does not exist. People spend a lot of energy wondering “why did this happen to me?”. What they should be asking is “why has my life taken this new direction?”.
A new set of questions
Closure works for doors, but in most cases it doesn’t work for people. If you’ve reached the point where you find that closure isn’t what you think it is, you’re essentially back to a starting point. How would your experience have changed if it wasn’t about “getting closure” but it was about “getting direction”? Maybe you would pay attention more to the things that show up in your life. Maybe you would seek out the answers yourself. And maybe you would be grateful for the experience, or the person, and direction that your life has taken.
I realize for many events this is a stretch since the search for closure is generally the result of a traumatic event. Explaining this is a longer discussion, and most people don’t believe it until they have experienced it. If you aren’t there yet, try to accept the possibility that it is true. If you can do that, you may find yourself asking other questions about your circumstances. Closure isn’t coming, or at least the way you think it is. But if you go out in search of direction, you may find what you are actually looking for.
