hello, goodbye, to feel or no

Time runs its course, decades come and go, and sometimes we lurch forward into profound realization. 

A couple of blog topics tried to express the difficulty I have with the month of April, and reconciling my past.  I’ve been filling days with yard work, chanting prayers and trying to stay in the present moment.

I looked at a picture of my young father taken in happy times, and it occurred to me that I never thanked him for giving me my brother.  Grateful insight gave me pause.  If my brother hadn’t been born, lived his short life and died, I never would have known how much love capacity I held.

Would I love and lose?  Absolutely.  I would choose love and make a million mistakes by loving.  I would endure the trapped emotional vulnerability that made me think I was dying, but I would still choose to love, and live with losing.

Confidence in love is a new emotion for me.   I choose to love even if loss is part of the deal.  Death is death, and obviously we’re all dying sometime. Do we all get a chance to love?

My father and brother died within five years of each other when I was young.  I went through two grieving processes back to back.  Death’s reality was easier to accept than forgiving myself for missing them.  Other people thought I should get over it and move on more quickly than I was able.

For me, growing older means facing truth that death and life don’t exist for my convenience.  I can only control whether or not I show up for my emotions that surround loss.  Love has been a comfort despite death.  Thanking my father for my brother after fifty years is an example of how strong love can be over the sorrow of losing.

Love and lose.  If I don’t love, I lose worse.  For me, love is worth the effort.