Intensive Loss

Today is my brother Mark's birthday - or it would have been, had he lived to see it. He died a little over a month ago following a long battle with cancer. I'm still - we're all still - grappling with this loss and his absence in our lives. Born on November 4, 1956 in Memphis, Tennessee, the world he entered, as well as the one in which he grew to maturity, is mostly a relic of a bygone era. We live in different times now, even if our understanding of the degrees of difference still lacks cohesion.

Being a student at BGI, I come up to Bainbridge Island from Portland once per month for a 4-day "Intensive" study session with my fellow MBA-Candidates learning about sustainability, marketing, finance, systems thinking, operations, management, strategy, leadership, social justice and entrepreneurship. They call them Intensive for a reason, as the demands put on your brain, body and spirit can sometimes feel almost more than you can bear. But, you do.

This month we have many special guests and other new additions to the community with us, including: Hunter Lovins, Joel Soloman, John Perkins, BG Nabors-Glass and David Korten. We're so fortunate to have these (and other) brilliant minds with us this weekend. The challenge, of course, is finding one on one time in a group of 150 other equally interested and enthusiastic learners eager to listen and inquire with these people.

A fellow student asked me, in all honesty and curiosity, how it feels to lose someone close to me. I answered that it feels bad, which is obvious and not very informative. What does it feel like? Yes, I do feel loved and remember the good moments in my life that I shared with my brother. But, describing loss to someone who has never experienced anything like it felt somewhat like telling someone who's never been swimming what it feels like to be wet. It's... wet. It is what it is. Pain feels like... pain. I don't have a better answer for it. At least, not yet. For now, I'm just wet.