"Where there is Love there is Life"
Mahatma Gandhi
Gone, but not forgotten
Losing someone is a painful experience and we will all cope with loss in different ways. Within five years I had to say goodbye to my mother, father, my child and partner and all of them are still filling my heart with memories of love. Losing a child and partner has been the biggest emotional challenge in my life and although I am grateful for the wonderful time we had together I have been fighting with the pain inside me.
Time is a great healer and as I promised my partner just before he died I will not be sad but continue my life with love and happiness. There is no standard answer to how long it will take any of us to be able to handle our lives without the people we lose. We know that friends and relatives will soon forget and continue their lives often without realising how painful it still can be. During a time of grief we can lose contact with the outside world and become isolated.
We need our own time and way to cope with this new life, opening up and talking about the pain might enable us to give it a place within ourselves where we can handle it much better and we then can start to live life again. It will always be part of us but it will not control our daily activities anymore.
Although I have been struggling with the loss for a long time I can now look back at these moments with gratitude. Death has taught me a lot about life and I have been able to turn the pain into love and happy memories. There is life after death!
People touch our lives in many ways and continue to teach and inspire us long after we had to say goodbye to them. We all will treasure the memories of our loved one’s in our own unique way. They are gone, but not forgotten.
Please feel free to browse my memories of all these inspirational people who have touched my heart and had an important part in my life.
Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name; speak to me in the easy way, which you always used. Put no difference in your tone; wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me and pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was, let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well.
Scott Holland