The Truth of Love
When my mother died, I had no words. No trusted listener for my feelings. I buried the pain I refused to admit and pretended not to care. When my beloved dog died, away from me, run over by a car in the care of my then-boyfriend, I cried more for Champ than I ever did for my mother (or myself). That loss un-raveled me. I didn’t know how to mourn.
If remembering is too painful, we teach ourselves to forget. If no one can tolerate your sorrow, we learn to keep it to ourselves. Deprived of oxygen, it festers, stagnates, stinks like death. It is a death. A death of who you were before, the beginning of who you are now, after.
After the death of a Very Big Love (Love never dies), during the slow re-building, there’s an empty place at the table and Love, present yet intangible, tethered and un-tethered, sits silently, waiting for you to see it, feel it, believe in it as truth.
Love is a truth deeper than bedrock, stronger than death, more powerful than rhetoric. You can shield yourself from loss by claiming not to care, by chirping that you’re ‘over it’ but in time, it catches up with you. Catches you off guard; so sudden you can’t outrun it.
The root of compassion is empathy. Your pain is my pain, your life envelops mine. Your happiness is important to me. I understand a bit about the road ahead. It feels like it’ll stay dark forever but Love is a Light which will never leave you. You will never walk alone.
LBM 8/23/2021
