Hey, I’m starting to feel better!  I can actually go for periods of time now and not feel like I’ve been gut punched.  I can actually enjoy the sunshine and the warmer temps.  I can spend some time thinking about myself and maybe even thinking about what’s next. 

Oh, but that’s just wrong. That’s not how I feel. Is it? Am I allowed? I mean, they’re all dead and my life is inexorably changed.  If I feel good, then that means I don’t love them, maybe never really loved them. If I feel good, it means I don’t miss them. If I feel good, it means I’ve forgotten them. If I feel good, it means their lives didn’t mean anything.  If I feel good, maybe somebody else will die and I’ll be back on the roller coaster. So, don’t go there. 

Of course I’m being facetious.  But, I did think all of these things when I started to heal.  And, I did feel guilty. It was as though my thinking about anything else other than my grief, and the people whose loss I was grieving, was a betrayal. 

As though if I didn’t stay focused on that, I was dishonoring their memory, negating their importance in my life, in the world.  In my mind, my grief over the loss of these people was part of my last connection to them at the precipice between life and death.  So, moving away from that was a rejection of that last connection. 

Through reading, meditation, and therapy, I came to realize that by clinging to that last vestige as the most important thing, it was keeping me stuck.  And, not living my OWN life was negating what all of my people gave me when they were here.  Certainly, that would not serve their memory well. 

My grieving was commensurate with the amount that I loved them, so it was legion! And, my recovery, my return to the life I was meant to live is a continuation of the love I have for them.  One of my biggest discoveries was that, when someone dies, the love does not.  The love lingers on. And on.  It doesn’t leave you. The love and the spirit live on forever.        

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