love hurts

[In this bloggage I will talk about love, grief, loss and death, so please be kind to yourself if you’re not in a place to consider these things at the moment and read another bloggage…]

When we love someone we give some of ourself to them. In love we give trust, vulnerability, hope, expectation, desire, reliance and many other extremely fragile and precious gifts. The Bible talks about us being united with another in love as becoming ‘one flesh’, which to me is partly a description of that mutual self-giving. Traditionally that is applied to marriage, but I think there are other relationships that are not sexual but which can equally be ‘one flesh’ relationships when someone we love becomes part of us as we become part of them.

I wonder if the pain and grief of separation from one we love is partly because that ‘one flesh’ has been torn apart and we were powerless to stop it. When that person is no longer around we have lost the part of ourself we gave them as well as losing them – all that they meant to us, all of the things we appreciated about them, all of the ways they blessed us, hearing their voice, feeling their touch, seeing their smile that comes from their soul. All those things are gone, but so is what we entrusted to them.

The frequency with which tears flow following the death of one we love is nothing to apologise for. The tears that won’t stop flowing are an act of ongoing love. They are proof that love endures and is stronger than death. They remind us that the one we loved mattered and still matters.

And while the one flesh is torn apart, and what we gave is gone with that person, it seems to me that what they have given us of their self endures. It endures not only in our memory, but it endures because we are different because we loved them and they loved us. It endures in our tears. It endures in the pain of loss. It endures in the solitude of aloneness.

What was given to us by the one we love became part of us and remade us and remains as a testimony to them. Even though they are gone, the part of them that became part of us is still part of us. Perhaps it even is woven into the comfort blanket of love and hope that gently wraps around us and helps us find ways for our life to continue without their physical presence with us.

Be blessed, be a blessing