Reflections on Loss

"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation"...(Kahlil Gibran). I have counseled many individuals who have gone through losses of people they have loved. Lately though, I have come across quite a few individuals who lost the loves of their life. I have talked about losses in divorces and split ups, but in those losses, individuals still had the choice to separate. In divorces, people split apart to learn, grow and develop in different directions and there is the optimism in finding love again. We all have seen the movies where true love reigns and people who are truly meant to be together, grow old with one another. What happens though in life when people find their "heart mate," that one person who really seems to be their other half and one partner dies unexpectedly? Love always finds a way but with that type of loss, one person is left feeling as if half of their heart is missing. That kind of love is envied by all and what many are really searching for. In life though, there are never guarantees about how much time heart mates will have together. That is why the gift of sharing that type of love is to be cherished and valued. Even one year or one month of that type of love can be worth a life time, if that is all the time the couple has with one another. Better to have spent that time together than to have missed out on that type of gift. The sadness and challenge though is for the surviving partner to find the will to live after that type of loss. No one can replace the lost love. One man told me after he lost his "true love," that people at the funeral told him, "You're still young-you'll find someone else." People mean well but that type of loss is so incredibly profound that "someone else" offers no comfort for the bereaved. Another woman told me that she still feels her husband's energy with her, everywhere she goes. She felt that she had found that one person who really understood her and loved her anyway. She says that life is a struggle without him because she and her mate had laughed at the same things and balanced each other perfectly. All of the surviving heart mates have told me that even with incredible love for one another, fighting was occasional and necessary but that their fighting was not purposefully mean or disrespectful. All relationships still require effort, even with a heart mate. Heart mates seem to make it all seem easier however because they are able to connect on a deeper level. The journey of loss is a difficult one, especially when people have found that kind of heart connection. The lesson is having the courage to embrace that type of union. Sometimes people have found their heart mates but are still too guarded to handle the union. Love is still experienced, even if people are not able to be together. There are many lessons either way. The courage in loving is in risking and as the famous saying goes, "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." That quote is from a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson: "I hold it true, what e'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." I know that there are no amount of words that can offer someone comfort who has faced that type of loss. Their journey is in finding a way to heal their heart by carrying reflections of their loved one with them in who they are, for in experiencing that type of love, you are changed forever. Their love is reflected in your memories and in the very essence of who you became from being loved and loving them. Love is always with you, even when one person leaves this life. Not even death can take it away. For whatever reasons, some younger people have crossed over recently, leaving their heart mates in deep sorrow. The journey for those individuals will be challenging, as they attempt to carry the "other" with them as they move forward and live their lives. I have watched as they have struggled even getting out of bed some days. There will be occasional dark days, filled with gut wrenching tears, anger and questioning but the process of experiencing those feelings honors the love they shared with their mate. Love finds a way in life and in loss. You just have to believe in your heart that there is higher purpose to everything that happens. Love can help you learn and it can help you heal. "I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken -- and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived"...(Margaret Mitchell). "The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost"...(G. K. Chesterton). “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love”...(Washington Irving).