Last night was the series finale of LOST, the six-year saga of castaways from a plane crash to an island shrouded in mystery. Over that time, almost every episode brought about a whole new batch of questions: What was this mysterious power of the island? Why were these seemingly random people oddly connected before they even boarded the plane? How would the skeletons in their closet of broken relationships, personal failures and tragic disappointments get resolved?
The conclusion left much unanswered. But what does get revealed is a parallel reality for the main characters, where they are given the chance to make the choices they couldn't make in real life. And specifically, we understand that almost the entire complicated story of supernatural beings, time travel and lonely people were all side stories to that of the main protagonist, Jack. When the show ends, he is finally able to let go of his disappointment in himself and his failures in a last act of self-sacrifice for those he loves. As he is greeted by his dead father and the people he loved into some sort of eternity, I watched and cried like a baby.
It has been one month since Hideo passed away, and I've thought about him everyday since. Over the weekend, his loved ones celebrated what would have been his 43rd birthday with an old-school party, the way he would have loved. I have felt more and more peace and acceptance of this life without Hideo, but I don't think I'll ever not feel that missing part in my heart.
Coincidentally, Hideo first lent me season 1 of LOST a few years ago and introduced me to the show. As much as the show had its share of ridiculous plot turns, we learn in the end that the fantastical world of the island was all in fact real. I wonder what reality we live in right now, that often feels so much like the only one that could exist because it's the only one we've known. We live with our day-to-day joys and pains, and we fall in love with the people around us: our dear friends and family. And when we lose them, there's no way to not wonder what all of the carefully placed chaos and joy and people we encounter are all heading towards.
What I appreciated about LOST -- the finale being no exception -- was that creators Jeffrey Lieber and Damon Lindelof thought to imagine a world outside of ours, and a reality much greater than what we can control. Though there is no mention of God, their imagination asked what the answer might be to the damage about our world. In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, he calls God "able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine." What they could ask and imagine is one day letting go of this reality and reuniting with lost loved ones, the prospect of which I can't even imagine the joy I might feel.
I hope for that new day when all of the mourning is over, and I'm blown away by a reality none of us could imagine possible.
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