Birdie: Love somebody from when you’re nineteen, one day he’s the same as ever, next day dead. So many tears they seem to wash something out of you. They leave this emptiness.
Odd: Loss is the hardest thing, but it’s also the teacher that’s the most difficult to ignore. Grief can destroy you or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone, or you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time--so much meaning it scared you so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it’s over and you’re alone, you begin to see it wasn’t just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together, or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything. It was the why of life. Every event and precious moment of it.
The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time. You’re driven to your knees, not by the weight of the loss, but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there. But one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it is to disrespect the gift of life.
[From the novel Odd Hours by Dean Koontz]
I hear those words "the love your shared sometimes so imperfectly." Tending to dwell on imperfections, the wrongness and lesser qualities of things, or otherwise occupying my mind with downer thoughts, I relate well to the so-imperfectly part. I must not stay there though! The deeper beauty of our time here, our connection with the souls He brings to us, and how to grow into the yielded, abiding life are goals worthy of my entire time and attention. I fall into the untruth that an hour here and there are just trinkets of time--there will be more. While I cannot realistically spend every second appreciating everything so as not to take life for granted, I can call on my "mind of Christ" for the awareness of moments in which to savor the righthererightnow, which essentially is respecting this gift of life. We who know and are known by the Most High God, of all people, can appreciate the profound, elemental relevance of this gift.
Odd: Loss is the hardest thing, but it’s also the teacher that’s the most difficult to ignore. Grief can destroy you or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone, or you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time--so much meaning it scared you so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it’s over and you’re alone, you begin to see it wasn’t just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together, or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything. It was the why of life. Every event and precious moment of it.
The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time. You’re driven to your knees, not by the weight of the loss, but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there. But one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it is to disrespect the gift of life.
[From the novel Odd Hours by Dean Koontz]
I hear those words "the love your shared sometimes so imperfectly." Tending to dwell on imperfections, the wrongness and lesser qualities of things, or otherwise occupying my mind with downer thoughts, I relate well to the so-imperfectly part. I must not stay there though! The deeper beauty of our time here, our connection with the souls He brings to us, and how to grow into the yielded, abiding life are goals worthy of my entire time and attention. I fall into the untruth that an hour here and there are just trinkets of time--there will be more. While I cannot realistically spend every second appreciating everything so as not to take life for granted, I can call on my "mind of Christ" for the awareness of moments in which to savor the righthererightnow, which essentially is respecting this gift of life. We who know and are known by the Most High God, of all people, can appreciate the profound, elemental relevance of this gift.
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