It is only when you lose your love that you question what love is.

I like the Hebrew word for love, “ahavah”, to me it reveals the true definition of love, for the word ahavah is built on the root consonants h-v which mean “to give”.  In order for love to be real love, it has to be expressed as an action.  To have the opportunity to love and be loved is our greatest gift as human beings on this planet earth.

Losing someone you love is sheer agony.  We all live in bubbles, and think there is no one around us who could ever understand what we are going through.  Whether it is a teenage love, your first post school love, a mature love, we cannot ever define or dictate what anyone else’s pain should be, or how they should be dealing with it.

I have been so mindful of aching hearts this past week.  On Thursday the 9 June I received a late sms from my Mom, ending saying, “Gayle died on this day in ’67”.  For those of you who don’t know me that well, Gayle was my sister, who endured nearly her entire short life in pain, fighting herself through suspected epilepsy, trial runs of phenobarb, projectile  vomiting, and then on to the cause – brain tumours, the related surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy.  When I gaze through the boxes of photos, I see a happy little girl, smiling in those moments for the happiness and relief she may have been feeling on those rare days. To my darling friends who have lost children and for the siblings, this pain is never ending, and it should never have been, but somehow, we all dig deep, and life as it was, can never be the same again. There are those numbing days where the pain is so acute, it feels like it happened yesterday.  As was clearly the case for my Mom this past week 48 years after Gayle died.

I perchanced on a piece of writing, that I thought was so pertinent. “Deep Grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a c0-ordinate on an map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place, but if someone can assure you that they have stood in that same place, and they have managed to move on, sometimes this will bring hope”  The question is, “Is sadness a place?”  “If it is, some people live there for years.”The old adage, “time heals everything,”  does not always apply.  Time helps you grow, time teaches you to cope better, but the pain of loss from your very body, never leaves.

A tad melancholy, for a beautiful Sunday, but, I’m hoping it is more of a tribute to you soldiers who have lost your children, brothers and sisters, and to all of us, be mindful of those close to you – they may be in pain right now.  Assure them that you have stood in that same place and you may bring some comfort.  Lets support each other.