Do you ever have moments where suddenly something you have pondered over and over suddenly becomes very clear? An ‘Aha’ moment. I had one the other day as I was riding back from Melbourne to Harmony. More in a minute.

Us “old timers” at the meetings frequently tell the new people how we each have to go “through” our grief, and we can’t escape it by going around, or over, or under it. Bob has shared that his grief changed when he focused on Mandy’s life, not her death. What changed him, and the rest of us? What is the glue that holds us together when we focus on our child’s death, and what gives us peace as we work through our grief? I have pondered this many times.

Back to my Aha moment. I was listening to Willie Nelson’s new song in the car on that ride home. The one we played at meetings, “Something You Get Through,” about losing a loved one. The chorus is “It’s not something you get over, but it’s something you get through.” We all related to those words. It’s something us “old timers” get! It’s the message we try to share with our new members. But this time I heard something different in the song. Willie sang:

“…life is bigger than a sad, sad, song, but love is bigger than us all. The end is not the end at all….”

That hit me like a brick! I had to replay it a couple of times… If that wasn’t enough, the next song that played was Alan Pedersen’s “Love Lives On.” Suddenly, it all made sense. Love is everywhere in our grief journey!!

I remembered how bad it hurt when Mandy died. All my feelings—anger, sadness, physical pain, walks at three A.M. because I couldn’t sleep, even my anguish over my feral cats—was driven by the mother’s love I felt for Mandy. She was gone, and I had a hole in my heart. It hurt because I loved her and she was gone. The pain was driven by the love bigger than us all.

After a while—a long while—those feelings of anguish started to lessen. It wasn’t because “time heals all wounds.” That’s BS! It’s because love is bigger than everything, including a “sad, sad song”. Love started to win out over hurt. Love started to help me see the things in Mandy’s life, instead of focusing on her death. Love let me love her life! Love replaced the dead Mandy with the still living one in my heart Mandy. The scar of her loss never left, never healed, but love made my heart stronger. Love was bigger than me. Love brought her back to me.

So I guess I’m saying that we all need to keep the love alive, and it will keep our child alive. We need to lean on our love until the time we are back in our child’s arms.

Love Is Bigger Than Us All!