Recently, words have failed me. It is
difficult to express the magnitude of the loss of a loved one. A year ago, I lost
my wonderful father, and a few weeks ago, I also lost my dear mother. Death is so unreal. My mind cannot comprehend
it, yet my heart senses the great loss. Each time I hear the phone ring, my
memory tells me it must be mom. Each time I visit my mom’s and dad’s home, I
feel their presence. There is an overwhelming flood of memories. I see her in
her favorite chair on her tablet watching YouTube videos of Greek music. I can hear
dad singing his favorite song to my mom. When I visit their home, I don’t want
to leave. When I come home from work, I have an urge to call mom and see how
she is doing. When I went grocery shopping a couple of days ago, I recognized
items that she liked and that I would have bought for her. My heart has a piece
missing. I miss all the things I enjoyed doing for them, and even though I had
a lifetime with them, I wish I could have had a greater appreciation of the
time we had together.
When life becomes difficult to comprehend,
I always look to God. I ask God to help me understand the unexplainable.
Experience teaches us more than what we can grasp with our minds. Experience
teaches our hearts. The Holy Spirit guides us in times of suffering. So far,
through this experience, I have learned three important lessons. First, I have
learned that God grieves deeply at the loss of any of His children who have
rejected Him and refused to accept the love He offers us. He grieves over our
separation and rejoices when we accept the Holy Spirit into our hearts because
through the Holy Spirit, we are no longer separated. Christ made this possible
through His sacrifice on the cross. The Holy Spirit reunites us to our heavenly
Father. The loss of a loved one helps us to understand God’s grief at our
separation and His joy at our reunion. It is the same kind of grief we experience
at the loss of a loved one and the same kind of joy we will experience when we
are reunited with them in paradise.
I know that God created us to love. He
created us to give of ourselves. When our love is received and returned to us,
we experience ultimate joy. We are complete. The second lesson I learned is
that the loss of our loved ones is experienced more deeply at those moments
when we wish we could show our love to them by talking to them, caring for
them, buying them their favorite ice cream or sharing the enjoyment of their
favorite song. It is the memory of those moments when we were able to act on
our love for them that we miss the most. We long to, once again, give ourselves
to them, but our separation makes that impossible. This is why we feel loss,
why we feel that a piece of our heart is missing. We do not miss them simply because
they loved us. We miss them because we loved them.
The third lesson I learned is that death
feels unreal because it is not real. It is not permanent. It is a separation,
but not a permanent separation. That is why we are in denial. In truth, there
are two realities, the physical and the spiritual. This physical existence is
temporal. It had a beginning, and it will have an end. Death is simply the end
of our physical existence, but our eternal existence is spiritual. Our soul or
spirit was created to continue after our physical death in our resurrected
bodies in the presence of God. Even in death, the Holy Spirit spiritually unites
us to our loved ones, at least those who are with God. My mom and dad loved God
and lived to love others. Therefore, I am confident that they are with the Lord.
When my time comes, I will no longer be separated from them. We will be
reunited in an infinitely joyous celebration. However, while I remain in this
life, I feel their presence and their love through the Holy Spirit. It is a gift
of the Holy Spirit, which gives us hope. It is the hope of our future life,
eternal life with God and with our loved ones, where there is no pain, no loss,
where there is only love freely given and freely received.
In this life, I will continue to miss my
father and mother. I will grieve our separation. But, I can relieve some of the
pain by keeping their memories alive in the way I live my life, by honoring
their legacy. I hope I can honor them by loving as selflessly as they did.
© 2018 Helen Kamenos
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