The other day a friend was going through the third anniversary of his mother’s passing. Anniversaries are hard. Birthdays are hard. Holidays are hard. Every day is hard, but these are particularly hard. Why is that?
What he said struck me. He said he would never spend another night with his mother. Two words that I rarely use are “never” and “always” because they rarely literally apply. From the common perspective when we lose someone we think we will never see them again. We will never hold them again. We will never laugh with them again. And on and on. We mistakenly imagine our lifetime in this body as an interminable series of days, even though we clearly know theirs was not.
The reality is it’s not true that we will never see them again, that we will never celebrate with them again, that we will never be able to express our love to them again. We will go where they have gone. My understanding is that after we cross over, that world that we can barely envision now, that seems so dreamlike and unreal is more real than anything we can now comprehend. That world makes this world seem like a dream. We are more ourselves than we ever were here. The love we feel here pales in comparison to the love we will feel there. The parties we have here are a mere shadow of the party we will have when we get there. We have to avoid falling into that trap. I am blessed to have found a community to surround myself with that believes as I do and helps me hold onto that reality. While the worst possible thing happened to my family, it’s not the end. It’s not permanent.
I number the days of my blog to provide to some perspective on how far I’ve come in what period of time. Looking at the days adding up gives me a sense of accomplishment. Looking at those numbers can be deceptive. It’s easy to think they’ll just keep going up and up. They won’t. I don’t know when, but one day will be the last. I wish instead of numbering the days going up, I could make it a countdown clock, counting down to the day when my race is completed and I get to see those who have gone before cheering me as I make the sprint to the finish line. It’s not that I will never see Shayna again. It just not for a while.
