Megaphone of Love

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”― C.S. Lewis

“Back on the caregiving roller coaster, I struggled to remember the lesson I had just learned so painfully with Mom: the end of caregiving isn’t freedom. The end of caregiving is grief.”― Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

A friend’s Mom passed away yesterday.
Another friend’s Mom in July.
Mine in March.
Others a few years ago, some decades.
Grief is both individual and communal.
Same and different.
Fresh and lingering.
Deeper than platitudes.
Beyond the words of a Hallmark card.
Not a process but a winding, rocky, sometimes beautiful journey.
A bi-polar SOB.
Depths and heights.
Laughter and tears.
Drops and waves.
Never over, merely changing its form.
Do not go around it, avoid, or run from it.
Right through the middle.
Loss is overwhelming and always overcome by love.
Friends and family, show up.
Not just in the beginning, but months later too.
Simply be there and available.
Don’t assume, always ask and listen.
Actions over words.
Peace, love, light on this journey friend.
Love walks beside you softly, quietly, fiercely.

“Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves