"It is better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all"
Alfred Lord Tennyson
What We Believe In (Jim Brickman)
Covered by Cindi Hall
http://youtu.be/k0VDWg44HbE
Today I had one of those moments. They don't come frequently (at least not for me), and they are so subtle that if I'm not paying attention it will pass by unnoticed. Let's just suffice it to say that we are not alone in the universe, and I was overcome with that knowledge today. There are those who exist in another sphere, not too far away, who are aware of us and our need to reconnect with them from time to time. Some people won't understand, but that doesn't change how things "really are". It kind of reminds me of what Luna Lovegood tells Harry Potter in The Order of the Phoenix, when only she and Harry can see the magical flying creatures that are taking the carriages to Hogwarts. The only ones who can see them are those who have seen and experienced great loss through death.
I remember the one and only visit that my mother made to my current home in May of 2000. She was having some chest pains (she had a rheumatic heart condition, eventually dying of congestive heart failure), and she was taking nitroglycerin pills for the pains. She had a difficult time going up and down stairs and she was fatigued. She slept a lot during the visit. It had been a long and difficult car trip for my parents to make in order to bring us some much needed furniture for our "new" home. Somehow my father had loaded the furniture into the back of his 1980- something Ford pick up truck, and they had made the 2000-ish mile trek to our house over 3 days. We were so happy and thankful to see them when they came bearing these gifts, and so sad to see them leave when the time came for them to make the return voyage. It had always been difficult to say good-bye to them when we parted, but this time felt exceptionally difficult. So, I sat down at the piano and pulled out this music by Jim Brickman, "What We Believe In". As I played and sang along I knew that that might have been one of the last times I would see my mother alive. As it turned out I had the blessing of having two more opportunities for short visits while she was still alive and somewhat coherent. Thankfully, I was able to be with her the day before she died. Unfortunately, I was not so lucky with my father's passing.
It had been a trying trip for them, so why did they make it? Because they loved us. We sacrifice and do things that we might not ordinarily do, or want to do, for those we love. Sometimes it can break your heart to love someone and have to leave them, or they have to be apart from you for some reason - a job, school, work, death. Believe me, "good-bye" is a word I've hated all my life* because I associate it with great pain and heartache! "Now love can break your heart when you say goodbye, but love is worth the pain, and all the tears we cry" because it really "is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all." There's a line in the movie "The Other Side of the Mountain" in which Jill Kinmont says something like this about her fiance, Dick Buek, that died in a tragic accident. "How lucky I am to have found someone and something that saying goodbye to is so damned awful." So on days like today I realize just how much I miss them, and just I how lucky I was to have had them as my parents and that ---
"If love is what we believe in
I'll see you in Heaven's first bright star.
If seeing is believing,
I look into the sky and there you are,
you're not that far,
'cause love is what we believe in"
*to quote Barry Manilow - http://youtu.be/WxSjAOPVDl0
(then I and "go on and cry 'til (I) run dry - it's all right")
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