Thursday Thoughts...

“What are you supposed to do with all the love you have for somebody if that person is no longer there? What happens to all that leftover love? Do you suppress it? Do you ignore it? Are you supposed to give it to someone else?” 

Maggie O’Farrell

I don't know about others, but I think and read about death and grief and loss a lot. Part of it I am sure is about trying to prepare. Trying to read and think and anticipate. Trying to be as ready as one can be. All the time knowing that all the prep in the world probably won't help at the time.

And so I had saved this quote to my 100+ page lists of quotes some time ago, (it feels like my Th Th quotes .docx could become a book of its own in a way!) and landed upon it today, when I am pondering Life, as I cycle through Art, Life and Books ponderings.

I think they are all great questions. So often we think about loss as absence - huge holes, gaping voids, endless echoes. We remember the person isn't there anymore to check in with, to laugh with, to hug. Their loss is physical; and there are empty rooms and beds and chairs...

This set of questions seems to ask us about not absence so much, but rather about the thing within that we shared; this excess of love we now have; all of the love that we had for the person. What now?

I think and think about this and I don't have an answer. I wonder if the love dissipates a bit like a dense fog gradually thinning and resolving and lifting? I wonder do some folk divert it and direct it towards somebody else? Do we set it in a safe place; its own special place and leave it there and visit it and remember it?

So many question from so many questions. 

Love is eternal.