Love is Never Wasted
Grief is the Proof We Loved Well
Grief is its own living presence.
It takes our breath away, etches scars on our hearts, buries into our bones so we feel it as an age-old ache on a rainy day.
We grieve loved ones, places we’ve been, memories we’ve shared, our old identities, and even the precious nature of Time itself. Grief seems to know no bounds, weaving its way through the very fabric of our human existence as a reminder of its part in the cycle of creation.
Over time, we learn to breathe again.
The scars fade.
Our body remembers how to stretch and move and carry on.
And grief is there, settled in the space of our hearts…
A reminder that we loved.
I woke up this morning at 4:44am. I remember looking at the clock and then begrudgingly getting out of bed to feed the cat so he wouldn’t wake me again according to an internal alarm I’ve yet to figure out.
Hours later, I hopped onto my social media. The first post was the sorrowful announcement that my childhood friend had passed at 4:44am.
I’m trying to keep my composure as I write this. I’m trying to express everything in my heart, but that feels impossible.
Such is the nature of human nature…
We’d known each other since the first grade, in high school she was one of my best friends, and over these years we stayed in touch on the periphery of each other’s lives through social media. Last year, we met for lunch and caught up, sharing stories of our hearts and laughing at old memories.
She was terminally ill then. She had been terminally ill for years, and I remember looking at her across the table at lunch—thinking how beautiful she looked, how special she was—and praying she had more time with her family.
When her husband posted that she had been declining, it still felt like a sucker punch in the gut, like all the breath left my lungs.
That’s also what grief is—an arrow to the heart.
A few years ago, I lost my friend, Amy, to brain cancer. Oddly enough, she’s been on my mind lately. She and my childhood friend were so similar—such bright lights in the world with equally infectious laughs. I remember before Amy passed, I was in the middle of a relapse from Lyme disease, and she sent me the most beautiful message saying I was an inspiration to her, telling me to hang in there and she was proud of me.
I didn’t know she was sick at the time—we were co-workers first, and she was my friend’s best friend more than mine. But we would always find each other at parties and gatherings to spend an hour or two in conversation catching up. She never mentioned her cancer.
At the time, losing Amy triggered so much survivor’s guilt within me…
Why was I still here? I remember asking God in my then-fractured relationship with him. When she had young children and a loving husband and so much to live for, and I was in pain and suffering and seemed to have so little—why was I still here?
It’s a question I don’t know if I’ll ever have the answer to, though over the years, I’ve healed the emptiness inside of me that makes me question my place in the world. Now, I no longer look at the loss I’ve endured but at all that I have, and every day, I wake up filled with gratitude and doing my damndest to make sure that my time here matters.
I truly do have so much life and joy and love inside of me, too…
Amy reminded me of that.
Being a psychic intuitive is weird. Being a medium while also recognizing your humanity is weirder.
I know what comes next. At least, my soul recognizes the truth of that transition. I’ve faced my own mortality—that has never frightened me—and I’ve had inexplicable spiritual experiences with the passing of family members, friends, and my soul dog. I’ve channeled messages from strangers’ loved ones—messages that are nonsensical to me but that mean the world only to them. I know there’s something more beyond this physical life…
But I also know we’re human. We feel deeply. And when we love, it fills us up.
That’s what grief is.
It’s not the passing that brings pain.
It’s the missing.
It’s raining here today. The weather seems to match the heaviness that’s in my heart—sadness for my friend’s family and this loss to the world, mixed with my own gratitude that I got to love and experience such a brilliant soul. Filled with joy, she was a beacon of light and positivity right to the end.
Tomorrow, the sun will come out again. I imagine she’s still shining brightly on the world, just now in a different way.
A few years ago, when I was knee-deep in grief from a significant loss that struck my soul, I asked God, in my now-mended relationship to him, why it sometimes seems like love doesn’t matter. I’d always believed that love was all we needed—that love can heal us, heal the world. But when we experience loss like this, where does all that love go?
And God reminded me: Love doesn’t disappear. It doesn’t fade away or cease to exist. It remains in our hearts, it lingers in our memory. Sometimes it’s repurposed and transformed into something new. It goes where it’s needed.
Love is never wasted.