Back to my Aha moment. I was listening to Willie Nelson’s new song in the car on that ride home. The one we played at meetings, “Something You Get Through,” about losing a loved one. The chorus is “It’s not something you get over, but it’s something you get through.” We all related to those words. It’s something us “old timers” get! It’s the message we try to share with our new members. But this time I heard something different in the song. Willie sang:
Love is everywhere in our grief journey!!
I remembered how bad it hurt when Mandy died. All my feelings—anger, sadness, physical pain, walks at three A.M. because I couldn’t sleep, even my anguish over my feral cats—was driven by the mother’s love I felt for Mandy. She was gone, and I had a hole in my heart. It hurt because I loved her and she was gone. The pain was driven by the love bigger than us all.
After a while—a long while—those feelings of anguish started to lessen. It wasn’t because “time heals all wounds.” That’s BS! It’s because love is bigger than everything, including a “sad, sad song”. Love started to win out over hurt. Love started to help me see the things in Mandy’s life, instead of focusing on her death. Love let me love her life! Love replaced the dead Mandy with the still living one in my heart Mandy. The scar of her loss never left, never healed, but love made my heart stronger. Love was bigger than me. Love brought her back to me.
So I guess I’m saying that we all need to keep the love alive, and it will keep our child alive. We need to lean on our love until the time we are back in our child’s arms.
Love Is Bigger Than Us All
Mary