Love and Grief

I was given this information to help me with my grieving process. I wish I could show you the format in original form. It has circles around each of the parts that are linked together in a beautiful pattern. ~ lots of love always Billie

The Linkage Between Love and Grief

Because one person's heart stopped beating doesn't mean another's heart stopped loving. Because we buried a body doesn't mean we buried our feelings for that person.

Our love goes on, is turned loose, searching... searching...

If you didn't love, would you grieve? Grief, then, is love not wanting to let go.

Perhaps the deeper you love, the deeper you grieve. Since nothing is permanent, if you choose to love, you must have the courage to grieve.

From loss and grief then, we either: GROW into a richer capacity to love, knowing the limits of time and the transitory nature of things,

or DIMINISH into a lesser capacity to love, because of a fear of loss and pain.

That is our only real choice in loving and in grieving, TO GROW OR TO DIMINISH. When the circle of love is complete and all love is invested, we feel "whole".

When the circle of love is fractured, our love investment becomes unleashed and goes searching... searching for the lost person... searching for meaning...

searching for reinvestment... searching for another place or places or person or persons to which to attach... searching...

The pain of the search is the grief of the lost love.

THE TURNABOUT TRICK, then, is to accept grief as love beyond loss. Call it reverse love. Call it the other side of the love-coin. Call it whatever you like. It is love not wanting to let go.

The real key to the adjustment is to be grateful for the intense grief, because the intensity of the grief can serve as a measure of the intensity of the love...

Only after a person has died do we really search the probing questions: "Who was she?" "What precise value did she give me while here?" "What was the intensity of our relationship?"

Is it possible to appreciate the value, the measure of something we have until we lose it? Our hindsight gives us clear vision of the measure of our love.

A Paradox? Is that the nature of life and love? Might the paradox have a relationship with guilt? Would you trade in your love experience so that you need not grieve?

If you had 20 years of investment with another, or 30, or 40, or 2, would you trade them is so that you need not grieve?

Be patient then, Give yourself a chance to learn how to live without the other. Why get busy so soon? Running... running... running...

Why pretend that we don't have difficult feelings? Is it because we're ashamed of our love? Is it because we're embarrassed by raw honesty? Is it because we're ingrained with the American Dream, the Good Life? To be strong? Not to show feelings? To have it all together? Is it because we're fair-weather friends?

Whatever it is, if you lost an investment, would you take time to mourn so that you might have a chance to mend? Can you afford on year, a few months, a couple of weeks to adjust? One year to learn to change a relationship of 30 years?

Give yourself a chance. Don't try to pull out so fast! Be patient. Take some time. Learn to live again. Altering love ties is difficult and painful work; it does not come easily or quickly.

Why need we cry through our smiles and laugh through our tears? When death comes to a marriage, part of the survivor dies with the death and part of the dead lives on with the survivor.

Part of you is gone - that's why you feel loss. All you can leave on this earth is what you leave in other people. The feeling that is not expressed is left screaming for expression. So face feelings: they are your love... out searching.
- Riverside chapter, Toledo, Ohio THEOS