ON HOPE AND HEALING
I don’t know much about grief and healing. I only know that I am a student of love and loss and I’m taking careful notes. One thing I’ve learned is that when I try to create new memories … new moments of love and laughter … hope grows and healing deepens.
We’re not a perfect family, not by any stretch. Even with our best efforts, we fall short a million miles. Maybe two … or ten. We struggle like every family struggles. We disagree, sometimes argue and on occasion we hurt each other’s feelings. But we don’t mean to. We make mistakes – but we always find our way back to forgiveness, love and laughter. Perhaps finding our way back to each other is what makes family so beautiful and so powerful.
Yesterday our family stopped by a park that was filled with changing trees and a grass covered with fallen leaves. We tossed leaves in the air in memory of Mitch. He loved to do that. As I saw my family laugh and play, my heart felt an increase of hope and healing.
Finding this depth of joy was like stumbling across a hidden treasure on a long, barren journey. A journey of grief where hope can sometimes feel like a mirage. Illusory. A promise of something ever out there in the distance, far beyond mortal reach. Yet there it was … not out there in the distance but right here, in my heart and soul.
I still cry for my son. I yearn for his company and I miss him terribly. Yet, despite those sorrows, hope and healing still happen.
Could it be that is one of grief’s great mysteries? Not that sorrow diminishes or goes away, but it can be displaced by new memories we make each day.
I’m still grieving, but I’m discovering a new kind of hope and healing … and that is a wonderful, wonderful feeling.