This is a topic where I would like to be able to write from the heart. The trouble isthat my heart doesn’t speak in words, and pinning the emotions running through it into an understandable form would be like cataloging a kalaidescope. Each tiny piece of the overall image is vivid and alive, constantly changing the shape of the whole.
This is always, in a way, about thought and mindset. I would like to sat it is about moving on, or letting go, byt I think those are the wrong words, with the wrong connotations.
Really, I guess this is about how when you cut a major branch from a tree, the scar never totally dissapears, and for a long time, the tree will mourn. But it will thrive again.
The trouble with humans, is that our thoughts get in the way of our ability to mourn, and eventually, to heal.
When you lose a loved on, it is like losing a limb. A part of your life you interact with as naturally as breathing is no longer there, a part of the foundations of your life are gone, and everything teeters. And so we greive.
The trouble is, we often can’t stop grieving.
We cling to ‘what if’, and to ‘if only’, and ‘if I had just…’. We seek to lay blame, we try to convince ourselves it’s all a dream, because life just can’t carry on like this. The sun cannot keep rising on a world that does not include the missing piece. How could it?
And so we bleed.
And we don’t stop.
A big sticking point in my life has been how to move on from the greif, how to let go of the guilt, and the aching, hollow space in my chest. The thing is, I was always afraid that I would be doing the ones I’ve lost an injustice, that I was betraying them, by even considering that like could carry on without them.
The thing that frightens us about the words moving on, is that it’s the final nail in the coffin long after the funeral, it’s that last part of you that gives up the fight, and makes it real. We hold onto the greif because we feel it’s all we have left of them, and if we leave that behind, we leave them behind. To us, the world shouldn’t ever be right without the ones we have lost. The sun should not rise when it cannot shine upon them.
There’s a long standing theory that talks about how energy and matter can never be destroyed, they merely change. Every atom, well, over the course of time, be part of everything Once we were all stars, we were all trees and rivers, once we were the colours of the dawn.
The theory can tested in less tangible ways too. All the things I am, all the things I do, are the product of the life I have led, the never ending chain of cause and effect that culminates in the present moment, and my past includes, more strongly that I can describe, my loved ones. If no one had taught me to read I would not be writing this, and no one could have taught me had the alphabet not been invented. The things I do as a result of things done for me continue to ripple outwards to others and to the future, touching more and more lives every second.
Memory plays a big role in the echoes of feeling. The love, trust, the laughter and all the tears, whisper through us every moment of our lives, and their echoes whisper through everyone around us and every onward. The physical elements pale in comparison to this. The body that died or left was never the important part. It’s the heart and the mind and the soul – these exist in more than three dimensions and like all forms of energy, they can never be destroyed. A thousand years from now, some one will smile because of a long chain of events and the echoes of laughter and memory will be intertwined all along it. Love can change shape, but it never dies.
Whatever you believe about heaven, or reincarnation, or nothing at all – they aren’t gone. How could they ever be when everything that was important about them is all around us? When it whispers across the world in a thousand effects. When you smile at the memories, when their atoms light the night sky as stars. They’re in you too, in tangible and intangible ways. In the air you breath, in the story you tell.
Moving on and letting go don’t mean letting go of them, it means freeing what they have changed from pain and sadness, welcoming them into a world where they still bring joy. You can never leave them behind, or forget them, they’re as much a part of the future as you are. In the most literal sense, they are all around, and you will never be without them.
