Learning lessons of love, loss

Trodding the long and winding road of life can make our heart pump harder and stronger. Or it can make it ache with the effort, even damage it.

Just ask any one who has been in love. It is probably the quintessential human experience: the one that can ennoble us, torture us and, in the best of cases, make us whole by its ineffable power.

As a therapist, spending years listening to the psychological heartbeats of many of my fellow travelers, I know that this can be an Oz-like territory to transverse. There are wonders to behold along the yellow brick road, and there are hopes invested that can be bitterly disappointed.

And there is loss.

If there has been one single thing that makes someone back off from this "quintessential human experience," it would be just that: the fear and avoidance of loss.

One patient recently described the complex relationship between love and loss to me. As a first-time father, he has taken great joy in his beautiful 4-year-old daughter who was a long time coming to their lives. Highly successful in the world of business, he has still known no greater emotional pinnacle than when he picks his daughter up from preschool and she rushes to to embrace him with an unmitigated joy.

Yet he is plagued by an almost immediate darkness: This experience of love will someday go away; someday this bundle of pure love will turn away from him, either appropriately or in anger. In his darkest moments, he becomes distracted from the full experience of his daughter's love by fearing that this joy will taken from him by her death.

I am trying to help this man understand that the reality of loss is what forms the power of love in our lives. It is the shadows that makes the sun feel warm and bright. I am trying to help him to avoid being distracted by loss, to be present fully to the love he experiences through accepting that all love is impermanent. Developing a tolerance for love will open up a greater capacity for love.

It is not an easy task.

My friend Anne knows something about love and loss. Her husband waged a valiant war against cancer, but died at the age of 59. When I asked her about what she has learned from that difficult experience, she shared the following remarkable insight:

"The only thing I can say for sure is that if you have loved, there is no loss. Love is always a part of you and is always around you. The form of that love may change, but if you are open to the signs, you will feel the presence of that love always.

"I often feel [my husband's] presence in my life. We had discussed his 'hovering' around my family and me when he died and I encouraged him to stay connected. That way I feel he is guiding and blessing us from his unique perspective all the time. It is a major source of comfort to me to know that after so many years we spent together, he is still and always will be a major part of my life."

Anne's experience instructs us. Nothing is lost when we love fully. If we can really embrace this, love remains a power in our lives; a power of regeneration, of expansion.

To know the truth of this, one only has to encounter the radiance in Anne's face. This past year, Anne got married again, to a man who had also gone through the pain of losing a beloved spouse to a premature death. When love is not lost through loss, it lives to ride again.

And what have I learned about love and loss that I can share?

Nothing very original, I'm afraid. I can say that I am grateful for the experience of both. And I have learned (borrowing from the familiar saying) that if love doesn't kill you, it will definitely make you stronger.