Love in Death

I’ll never forget the moment as a child when I realized my parents could die. I thought my heart would wrench itself from my rib cage. I couldn’t breathe. I was devastated. When I could no longer stand the night’s darkness and sadness alone, I ran down the hallway on my bare feet, and my parents wrapped their loving arms around me as I wept.

Tonight for my William and Abby, the trigger came surprisingly from the last chapter of a story we thought we knew well. We were all curled up throughout Abby’s room with special lovies, blankets, and pillows, as I read through the last pages. A few sentences caught me off guard myself, but I didn’t realize the depths of my children’s hearts they were reaching. Sweet loving babes.

William was the first. His face hidden in his pillow, he wept for his granddad and gripped the stuffed lion with the heart on its paw, the last gift from a sweet man who loved Valentine’s Day. Abby quickly followed. My steady Abby suddenly appeared downstairs. One minute she was thinking of puffy pink unicorns and the next she was unexplainably scared.

Their daddy hugged them, and I spoke gently, stroking their brows and holding them on my lap.

Our hearts with their great capacity to love can hurt so when that love feels lost, but we must remember that one of God’s greatest gifts is that death does not take that love away. It enables us to be with that love always. For if God who is always with us is love, and we love our loved ones so, then even when they go to be with God they are with us always in God’s love. We are so blessed to have the time to build many, many memories to carry with us in our hearts so that when we do feel that hurt our memories will remind us of our love and comfort us.

Death is not easy, but in it God’s greatest gift of love is revealed in its rawest form. Jesus reminds us of this.

Dear children, I love you so. Hurting does happen, but love does heal. May you find comfort in the love of your mommy and daddy, your grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and each other. You are surrounded by our love and God’s, always. Your hearts are so big. I love the way you love and care.

With love and light,

LT