Love is different when you know grief and loss but different isn’t any less meaningful. It isn’t less important or less potent. It’s simply unique, in a way that only you can understand. In ways the world couldn’t comprehend, because it is yours and yours alone. Unless an outsider knows love after death, they can’t possibly imagine what it feels like.
Love is different when you know loss and grief. It looks different. It feels different. It remains, but it is unlike the love of the people who get to share it freely, back-and-forth with ease. Love that has to journey to eternity and back is different from the rest. It is complicated and harsh. It’s beautiful too, but it’s messy and misunderstood by most of the world.
When you lose someone, when they die, the love doesn’t die. The love doesn’t dissipate or fade. It doesn’t lessen or evaporate. It stays, even when the world fails to acknowledge it or remember it exists.
Love looks different when someone you love is in heaven.
It might look like prayer. It might look like tears. It might look like a visit to the cemetery and a conversation with a stone. It might look like anger. It might look like fear. It might look like pain. It might look nothing like you planned and nothing like you dreamed, but no matter how it looks, it exists and it’s real.
On a day that celebrates love, don’t forget to celebrate your love, even if that means simply remembering it, honoring it, and holding it close to your heart and your attention.
On a day that celebrates love. On a day that memorializes romance and dramatic displays of affection, don’t let that harden your heart or change the composition of your soul.
Your love might look different than those around you, but that’s what makes it so beautiful and so unforgettable. It’s the kind of love that drifts beyond eternity. The kind of love that outlasts final breaths and final heartbeats. It’s the kind of love that knows no end. It’s the kind of love that shouldn’t be forgotten or tucked away, not on this day or any day.
You may not hold a sappy card, a heart shaped box of chocolates, or a vase of roses, but what you hold is priceless. You hold the love of someone in eternity, an infinite love. A love so powerful and endless, it doesn’t need anything you could ever buy in a store. Remember that when you look around today.
The best kind of love is the kind that lasts forever, and you have that. You always will. Death did not change that truth, though it changed the way it looks. You are loved from eternity, an infinite and powerful love. The biggest and boldest love there is, the love from someone in heaven.
My husband died this past April, of course Valentine’s Day was yesterday and tomorrow would have been our 38th wedding anniversary. I have struggled for days dealing these two days that were so meaningful to both of us, then I got this in an email and the loss became less painful, the depth of love more meaningful. I cannot thank you enough for helping me remember the truth of our love for one another. God bless you for sharing this!