The Commonality of Love and Grief

Do we understand love and grief, and how might they be linked? Both emotions are all-consuming and seize us when we are least expecting.  There are many types of love. but I’m talking about the shared love between two adults in a committed relationship. During my life, I have twice experienced love and grief.

 There are hundreds of definitions of love, and not all apply to our individual phycological experience. I couldn’t find the source, but someone stated, “True love is a selfless act.” It’s when you continually put your significant other at the center of your existence.

The Songs of Solomon in the Old Testament of the Bible gave me another perception of what love is.

“Set me as a seal upon your heart,

as a seal upon your arm,

for love is strong as death,

jealousy is fierce as the grave.

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

the very flame of the Lord.

Many waters cannot quench love,

neither can floods drown it…”

Love is subjective, and what I feel or describe differs from others. Yet, I believe “True Love” personifies when the individuals share an emotional bonding that both understands and protects. This same love goes beyond the intimate relationship. There must be trust and a willingness to address differences and forgive the transgressions of each other. You need to support and care for your partner during illness and other difficult circumstances. As the common marriage vows state:

“I____take you (bride or husband) to be my wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, I promise to love and cherish you until death we do part.”

When the two individuals take their love and relationship seriously and live by their vows, there is an intermingling of self. For some, including me, it is when the souls of each become one. But life can change circumstances, and often does change the deep-rooted emotional commitments. When the trust is damaged, or the misdeed is unforgivable, the commitment of that love breaks and is often unmendable. But the worse shattering of the union is due to death. When this happens, grief impedes the love and life changes for the survivor.

Depending on the type of death of our loved one will differentiate how we experience grief. The professionals will tell us that there are stages of grief, and we all encounter them differently in no particular order. We also may experience the stages more than one time.

I don’t want to spend time defining or discussing the stages of grief. Instead, I want to share what I have learned from my experiences. I find myself fortunate that I found love twice in my life. The first was with my wife of 13 years. When we married, I was immature and didn’t understand how to love. She taught me how to love and give myself to her. The beauty of our romance brought my daughter into my life. However, I destroyed her trust when I could no longer deceive myself and her with my sexuality. Unable or unwilling to accept the circumstances, she ended her life.

My second love became my soul mate. With him, it was instant infatuation, and our love grew stronger over the years. We shared hardships as well as beautiful memories over the 35 years together. Our life became so intertwined that when he suddenly died of heart failure, part of me died with him. I didn’t know who I was with the missing piece.

The similarity between both my spouses was their unexpected deaths. Both created confusion and a disassociation with my world. I found it difficult to envision a life without them. It was through understanding my grief that I learned they were still part of me. Each one left me with the enrichments of our lives that I carry today.

I found grief was not something I experienced, and, at some point, it ended. Grief is complex. I don’t stifle the tears when I find myself in the throes of sadness. I allow myself the luxury of blue days and don’t see it as demeaning when nothing gets done.

It wasn’t a journey per se, with a beginning and end. I found it to be what Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Life is a journey and not a destination.” For me, the experience of death has been one of the many life journeys. With each episode, I’ve grown in strength and changed into who I am today.

We don’t stop loving them at death. The love and our relationship with them continue but in a different dimension. Discard the thought that it takes toughness to conquer grief. It’s not something we defeat. We learn to adapt to it and heal. We rebuild our life, becoming stronger from the experience. What doesn’t happen, we never return to the life we once had.

During the podcast All There Is by Anderson Cooper, a guest stated, “Death isn’t an enemy, but rather a partner in life. If we are fortunate enough to experience true love, we will certainly experience separation from that love. Queen Elizabeth II is quoted as saying, “Grief is the price we pay for love.”

As we begin to heal from our loss, our memories shift from the devastation of the death to the reminiscence of those beautiful moments we shared. Those remembrances are the love that nothing can destroy. Where there is intense grief, there is extraordinary love. Once we heal from grief, we can understand the commonality between love and grief.

Don’t be shy. Please leave me a comment.