Memories

People are what make life worth living.  I am blessed with many amazing people in my life.  Some have been with me a lifetime and others perhaps only a year or two, but the mark they have all made on my life has been significant.

But I think we are all blessed with a select few people who might not be with us physically forever, but whose imprint and influence will last a lifetime.

I was always afraid of losing people I love through death, and obviously I still am as I assume most of you are.  But over the last three years, I have come to a different understanding of life and death and what perishes and what is eternal.  I used to think that when physical life ended, we would go into an afterlife, but our presence here on Earth and with those we love was gone and was irretrievably lost to history.  I really didn’t know what people meant when they said that people live on in our hearts.  Honestly, it sounded like a baseless platitude.

But that has all changed, thankfully.  Now I understand that love doesn’t die.  It’s almost as if love isn’t something two people hold in their individual hearts, but rather it’s something that takes on a life of its own and becomes its own entity.  And when I look at it now, that makes complete sense because when it all comes down to it, really there is no force anywhere in the world that can compare to that of love, so if anything is eternal surely it is love

We become different people when we are loved full heart and soul, unconditionally.  In small ways and big ways, we are able to transcend our own flawed nature and become a little closer to the person we are in the other’s eyes, a little closer to the divine.  We are better and the world is better because of it.

And I don’t think our loved ones really ever truly leave us.  It’s nothing obvious and perhaps you have to be a believer in order to see it, but we can feel them around us.  Sometimes it’s just in an odd feeling, and other times it’s in a sudden calm or a sudden ray of light that shines down on us in an unexpected way.  Yea, I think if we are open to it, we can feel loved ones who have departed.

And who knows.  Maybe there’s a whole world of angels all around us who we simply can’t see.  At least that’s what I like to believe.

So today, I am happy for memories, for memories whose joy brings us so much comfort that it can eclipse the loss we also feel.  Our bodies perish, our loved ones perish, but our souls and our love, those live on forever.

And so for today, three years later, I just want to say that until we meet again, may God hold you forever and always in the palm of His hand.  I love you.