The Linkage Between Love and Grief

Because one being’s heart stopped beating doesn’t mean another’s heart stopped loving. Because we buried a body doesn’t mean we buried our feelings for that being.

Our love goes on, is turned loose, searching, searching…

If you didn’t love, would you grieve? Grief, then, is love not wanting to let go.

Perhaps the deeper you love, the deeper you grieve. Since nothing is permanent, if you choose to love, you must have the courage to grieve.

From loss and grief then, we either: GROW into a richer capacity to love, knowing the limits of time and the transitory nature of things,

Or DIMINISH into a lesser capacity to love, because of our fear of loss and pain.

That is our only real choice in loving and in grieving, TO GROW OR TO DIMINISH. When the circle of love is complete and all the love is invested, we feel "whole".

When the circle of love is fractured, our love investment becomes unleashed and goes searching… searching for the lost pet… searching for meaning…Searching for reinvestment…Searching for another place or places or animals or persons to which to attach…searching…

The pain of the search is the grief of the lost love.

The TURNABOUT TRICK, then is about to accept grief, as love beyond loss. Call it reverse love. Call it the other side of the love coin. Call it whatever you like. It is love not wanting to let go.

The real key to the adjustment is to be grateful for intense grief, because the intensity of the grief can serve as a measure of the intensity of the love…

Only after a pet has died do we really search the probing questions: "Who was she?" "What precise value did he give me while here?" "What was the intensity of our relationship?"

A Paradox? Is that the nature of life and love? Might the paradox have a relationship with guilt? Would you trade in your love experience so that you need not grieve?

If you had 14 ½ years of investment with another, or 15, or 16, or 2, would you trade them in so that you need not grieve?

Be patient then, give yourself a chance to learn how to live without the other. Why get busy so soon? Running…running….running…

Why pretend that we don’t have difficult feelings? Is it because we’re ashamed of our love? Is it because we’re embarrassed by raw honesty? Is it because we’re ingrained with the American Dream, the Good Life? To be strong ? Not to show feelings? To have it all come together? Is it because we’re fair-weather friends?

Whatever it is, if you lost the investment, would you take time to mourn so that you might have a chance to mend? Can you afford one year, a few months, a couple of weeks to adjust? One year to learn to change a relationship of 14 years?

Give yourself a chance. Don’t try to pull out so fast! Be patient. Take some time. Learn to live again. Altering love ties is difficult and painful work; it does not come easily or quickly.

Why need we cry through our smiles and laugh through our tears? When death comes to a relationship, part of the survivor dies with the death and part of the dead lives on with the survivor.

Part of you is gone – that’s why you feel loss. All you can leave on this earth is what you leave in others. The feeling that is not expressed is left screaming for expression. So face feelings: they are your love…out searching.

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"Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." - Kabil Gibran