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Losing Love – MEDA WHITE
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Losing Love

Meda White

I said goodbye to a family member over the weekend. Having a large family is a blessing, but there is a drawback: The more people there are, the more people there are to lose. It seems like every time I turn around, we’re losing another one.

 

The Aunt we lost was the wife of the Uncle we lost last year. They were married about sixty years and the last year was very hard for her, grieving and adjusting to the loss of the love of her life. It made me take a closer look at grief.

Grief is a reaction to loss. One theory says there are five stages: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. These can occur in any order and people can revisit stages throughout their lives.
During the denial stage, people try to protect themselves from the intense emotion surrounding the loss. In bargaining, we dwell on what we could have done to prevent the loss. Anger can be toward the loved one, oneself, or God, as we try to find someone to blame for the loss. Depression is the painful period where people allow themselves to feel the loss. Acceptance doesn’t mean that the loss is no longer felt but that the person in mourning can move forward and begin to heal and live life again.
Sometimes, we really miss people who were significant in our lives. It might have been a spouse, parent, child, sibling, cousin, or friend. The people we love are often hard to forget and difficult to get over. Even when we didn’t see them every day, there are those moments we remember them. We hear a song or see someone who reminds us of them and we want to pick up the phone and call them.
As a reader and writer of romance, many times our heroes and heroines have lost love. It might have been through death but sometimes it’s from divorce or a breakup or betrayal. Sometimes, the loss is part of their backstory. Other times, we walk with them through their pain as it happens.

Understanding the grieving process can help us develop characters that readers can relate to, because at one time or another, all of us lose love. We need to let ourselves feel what we feel, own it and eventually let it go. The experts call that resilience. In moving on, we can honor someone’s memory by living our lives to the fullest rather than dwelling on the past and lingering over the pain. It’s easier said than done some days but in the end, we all only have a short time on earth to love the people in our lives. Love well, my friends.

4 Comments

  1. Absolutely lovely–and I have so much sorrow for you loss.

    The hardest part is letting go and time, funny enough, helps.

    I cherish those I love–because I know life is a fickle thing. 🙂

    Thank you for this–truly a wonderful post.

  2. When I think of death I always remember Forrest Gump standing at Jennie’s grave and saying “mama said death is a part of life but sometimes I wish it wasn’t. I remember the first time I heard that phase I was a little girl, we lost a very dear aunt. I didn’t understand about death,why people went away and didn’t come back.There was a wonderful old woman who always came to help out during times of loss. She held me in her lap and told me about the fall and winter when every dies back and the spring when everything begins new life. To everyone and everything there is a season, New life begins with death.Death is a part of life but I wish it wasn’t.

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