It's February 2020. Yet I keep seeing people's favorite quotes running around the internet, and they don't seem to change much. There are motivational and de-motivational posters. There are colorful Don't-Worry-Be-Happy thoughts and dark foreboding This-Is-My-Sad-Face thoughts.
The elusive nature of Love is the target of many of the quotes. Winning or Losing. Promising or Leaving (or Being Left). Fling or Forever.
Right. When it happens to you, having the one you love get up and leave you is The Deepest Pain. Understood. Yes, that hurts. Breaking up is hard to do, and all that. Corruptio optimi pessima -- what is the worst is the corruption of what had been the best. But even as a subset of loss, that isn't the worst loss. The lovelorn heart is not the one that knows the deepest anguish.
So far as I've made it through this life, the worst pain I've encountered is this: the one I love is hurting while I am powerless. A sick child. A parent with cancer. When someone I love is fighting a battle that I can't substantially help them win -- to me, that is deeply painful. A pain beyond memes and posters of people on the edges of cliffs.
At times like that all you can do is hold them. Sometimes that means in your arms. Sometimes it can only be in your thoughts and prayers. Hold them in the security of promises kept and vows honored. Hold them in the small daily things that are all we can do. Even if that means only remaining quietly nearby.
I acknowledge (but try not to dwell morbidly on it) the approach of the end of life for me and for others in my life. One of the consequences of True Love Till Death is, well, Death.
When the time comes, I figure the holding will still be the best course to take. Because if love was the right thing to do in the first place, it is still the right thing to do in the last place.
