“Tis a fearful thing, to love what death can touch,” wrote the Jewish poet Yehuda HaLevi.
Shiver-inducing lines like this are what turn me from having a serious relationship and falling in love. Perhaps the only feeling bigger than falling into love is the pain of having it ripped from you. The bigger the love, the bigger the pain.
Today I led a service which commemorated the lives of dozens of people who passed away in the past 6 months. Many of their widows were in the audience, and through the wounds were now months old, likely didn’t feel that way. They wept, and many came to me afterward and told me more about their late spouse. They wanted me to know about his sense of humor, or her adventurous spirit.
“We were together 61 years, but it wasn’t enough.”
It’s a scary thing, to think about falling in love only to have her ripped from me. Or starting a family only to have more members of it to lose.
Or perhaps I’d be the one to go first, leaving my most precious humans behind, grieving in the wake.
One particularly haunting post from Reddit that has always stuck with me said something like, “most humans are born surrounded by family, and die surrounded by family, but these are two totally different groups of people.”
I suppose that for most of us, we have to put work into creating that second group. It’s not going to form itself. It also means sacrifice and love; I can’t take off to Nigeria again on a whim, or drop my job to go teach in Guatemala.
I suppose that today, I’m just reflecting on the deeper things in life. What matters most? What three sentences will describe my existence when I’m gone, and will I have loved the crap out of my family and friends enough?
I hope so.
Despite the pain of future loss, I want to love while I’m alive.
e
Day 38 of 100 Days of Blog
Two worthy comments, “I want to love while i’m alive” and “I hope so”
You have an abundance of HOPE!!