As November of 2k17 comes to an end, I find myself wondering what it would feel like to maybe one day be the child my parents raised. The one they hoped and prayed would make a difference. I lost my mother when I was only 13. That age was supposed to be the beginning of manhood and I ended up losing 50% of my direction and a friend you’d have to see to believe. My father and I agree that she must’ve just been too good to be true. I’ll miss her forever. It’s one of the few things I know to be absolutely true. Funny how even math fails sometimes. Our whole universe follows the same laws, until it doesn’t. But a lot of the things you can’t really explain are the ones you’re most certain about, and I feel as though I’m finally beginning to feel what love is. And it’s real, that I can guarantee you. You might not always recognize it when it’s there, but this isn’t something humans invented. It’s something we all tune into at moments during our lives–maybe even animals. I can only imagine what love feels like after marriage, but once you become a parent, it’s probably the realest thing you will ever feel. If you have parents as good as mine, you’re both extremely lucky and heartbreakingly unfortunate. Like all people, your parents’ times must come.
Love creates a bond like an electric current between people. This bond grows stronger the longer and deeper you love someone. You essentially become attached. When a loved one passes, this current stops. This is when you start to feel drained. It’s like the remaining energy is looking for somewhere to bounce off of, and eventually just leaves you and doesn’t come back. That third person created by the binding of two is half dead and the second person completely dead. Looking at old pictures where their soul is supposedly captured takes that energy that you don’t have which ends up making you sad instead of happy. It just keeps draining you.
When someone loses their spouse I can only imagine the feeling to be completely and utterly devastating. There’s no way you can ever honestly move on. You’re half the man or woman you once were. Isn’t that how the math of love works out? It’s just the way it is.
Children know their parents since the day they’re born. They’re almost like eternal beings to them. When a child loses their parent, it gets a little scarier than sadness.
Life stops making sense, in a very real way. Around the time you start questioning what it is you can really know, you become paranoid. Your first horrifying, tormenting thought comes along: “If mommy’s gone, is daddy going, too?” Now you understand what people were talking about when they said that all good things come to an end. Oh and yes, the sadness is pretty bad, too.
If you’re an only child, you’ve been spared the extra death anxiety you feel for your sibling(s) as a natural result of losing anyone you love. The more siblings you have, the more crazy you become. This pain alone can make life unbearable.
Before you’ve even landed your first job or learned to drive, you feel like a 65-year-old in a nursing home. You just know you’re too young to vegetate away in the mocking face of despair. Mom would’ve wanted you to be just like the other kids you think to yourself. And you’re right. But the fact still stands that part of you is now dead.
How deep is your love? What happens when it’s all gone? What then happens to you? Forgive my naivety. May God forgive that I haven’t lived long enough to get used to love or sadness.
Love in life and in death,
Jonathan.
