HUG CORNER: Thought for the Week 7/17/17
July 17, 2017
“Healing After Loss” Martha Whitmore Hickman
“Real grief is not healed by time…if time does anything, it deepens our grief. The longer we live, the more fully we become aware of who she was for us, and the more intimately we experience what her love meant for us. Real, deep love is, as you know, very unobtrusive, seemingly easy and obvious, and so present that we take it for granted. Therefore, it is often only in retrospect – or better, in memory – that we fully realize its power and depth. Yes, indeed, love often makes itself visible in pain.”
-Henri Nouwen
At first this is frightening. Grief deepening? Am I never going to feel better?
So much of the meaning of our loved one’s life becomes distilled, sifted through memory and through experience after his or her death. New insights awaken, new appreciations, and with these come new birth pangs, and new yearnings that our beloved was still with us.
But this ongoing process also promises that, in a way, loved ones will never leave us, that their lives will continue to nourish and, yes, change us – that they will, indeed, be with us always in the mutual interdependence of love.
My loved one will be with me in these bittersweet moments of deepening relationship.