Non-Bereaved
The excerpt I am including comes from a book called, "The Heart of Grief: Death and the Search for Lasting Love" written by Thomas Attig, copyrighted in 2000.
When we are apart, we give those we love places in our thought and prayers. We remember them. We speak of them with others. We shape our lives in terms of commitments and covenants with them. We share their interests and concerns. We model our actions and characters on them. They motivate and inspire us, even though they may be far away. We share their hopes and dreams. Sometimes they make us laugh; sometimes they make us cry. In these and so many other ways, their lives remain intimately linked and lovingly interwoven with ours. We often sense that they, too, hold us in their hearts at whatever distance or time seperates us.
Loving in seperation, then, is not foreign to our experience. We know that these ways of the heart well. We could scarcely sustain a single relationship if we did not. Yes, there is the difference that, we both live, we can come together again. We may miss them terribly, but we do hold them in our hearts, at times tenaciously.
Loving in seperation after death is not so very different. Missing those who have died once again gives them a place in our hearts. Beyond missing them, the give-and-take between us and those who have died assumes familiar shapes. We can still give our attention, interest, admiration, understanding, respect, acceptence,forgiveness, loyality, affection, praise, and gratitude to them. And we can sense that they reciprocate or that what they have given us is still with us.
We can also continue to receive and benefit fromt their material assistance, advice and counsel, instruction, intellectual stimulation, perspective, direction, honesty and candor, moral and spiritual guidance and support, modeling of how to be and act,encouragement, expressions of confidence, enthusiasm, a sense of belonging and inspiritation. We may believe that they literally watch over us or walk wi th us, sharing our joys and sorrows. Or we may sense that they are with us in spirit ad remain our life's companions in our hearts.
Reciprocity is give and take and doesn ot stop whenn someone dies. It changes. We continue to give and receive. Those who have died gives us their legacies, the fruits of their lives. Sadly, we cannot contribute directly to their lives any longer. We may, however, sense that they witness or support us as we, in turn contribute to others lives. For our part, we sense that they are still with us in our hearts. We may sense that they hold us dear or that the love in their hearts is still with us.
I have yet to meet one person who has lost a cherished loved one who would ever want to forget them, yes they could do without the pain but that too is the price for loving individuals and the pain is never totally erased. It really becomes a case of juggling and finding a way to live without it crippling us.
In his book, Thomas Attig, certainly strays from the conventional thinking, which for countless years it was thought it was better to not talk or think about the deceased, best to not remind the bereaved of their loved one. Personally I think it's a great diservice to ask the bereaved to not talk about their loved ones. To bottle it all up and pretend it didn't happen would just be making ticking time bombs of us all who have lost those we cherish so much.
