April 22, 2023
“Death ends a life, not a relationship. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”
– Mitch Albom
There’s something unusual about our repository of memories of loved ones we’ve lost. Something almost transcendent. Even if we knew them at their worst, we often remember them at their best. Are we looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, or is it something deeper than that?
Is it perhaps a recognition that in the end, all of us are imperfect? Some mystics say that despite our flaws, our Creator looks at us as perfect creatures because he made us. Much like a child with an old stuffed animal, He accepts our flaws and loves us with an infinite love just as we are.
Kathy’s father was an alcoholic for almost 40 years. At 50, he got sober, and yet her most persistent memories aren’t of the pain his drinking caused, which her family endured, but of the new man he became during his 25 years of sobriety. A man known for making birdhouses, which he gave away, and for helping the still-suffering alcoholic any way he could.
Love and forgiveness can smooth out the rough edges of our memories.
Carmel could be an irascible woman if you got on her wrong side, which was something many people did. However, her nieces and nephews still laugh when they remember her lemon cakes and her anisette cookies and her veal parmigiana. Nobody did it better. They also remember that she would always ask ANYONE who walked through the door, “Can I get you something to eat?”
Because of love, we look for the good and are willing to overlook the bad.
On your journey to healing, memories will come welling up like an underground spring. Share them and hold them close to your heart because love is eternal. It’s the only thing we take with us into the next life.
These are issues that you have to address in the moment, while trying to be honest, frank and fearless. There is no simple answer.
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Memories will sustain us until we meet again … when every tear will be wiped away.