Tag: what is love
Love is…
Love is…
This post has the possibility to be cataclysmicly misinterpreted, but I’m going to write it anyway because I want to document how I feel and I know others feel the same way when they have lost partners.
Words can’t express how lonely I feel at the moment, and that is very definitely ‘lonely’ and not ‘alone’. Those two words seem to have the same meaning on the face of it but they are so completely different, I’m surrounded by wonderful kids, supportive family and amazing friends who are doing everything they can (for which I am truly and eternally grateful) but it doesn’t matter what anyone does there is no substitute for the love that is shared between partners.
There is something about the love of a partner that is so very different from anyone else. There are conditions to the love from a partner, it’s not handed out because they are family or because they feel sorry for someone, the love from family and friends is unconditional, it’s kind of compulsory because of the relationship. But the love of a partner is conditional, conditional upon that love being reciprocated and it feels very different to all the other kinds of love.
The Love of a partner has to be worked at, it has to be noticed every day and it is completely two-way, and because it has to be worked at you feel it every time the other person extends their love towards you – and right now that love is missing. Not only missing from being given to me but missing in that I can’t hand it out, and that feels cold… so very cold.
There’s nothing that can replace noticing how beautiful Claire was, stroking her hair, giving her a peck on the cheek and then getting on with what ever I was doing. Even hearing the jingling of another woman’s jewellery brings those emotions flooding back, or seeing someone wearing some clothes similar to what Claire wore reminds me that I can’t just tell her I love her, give her a peck on the cheek – giving love and feeling love!
I posted this on Facebook last night, and I really mean it…
“If you have a partner, please go and hug them right now and notice how wonderful it feels to be so close to the one you love. I’m wishing I could do the same.”
Loss of Love
Loss of Love
Whilst driving the other day I had a realisation. I’m not loved any more!
I’m not saying that no-one loves me, it’s just that I’m not loved in a husband/wife way any more.
I had a long chat with 2 of the kids last night about Claire (To. and M.) – they too are feeling it… they aren’t loved in a motherly way any more.
I guess we all feel that ‘loss of love’ in a different way, the love of a Sister, a Daughter, a Mum, a Wife or a Friend. And that love that’s missing can never be replaced because it goes deeper than the specific role.. it was the unique and special kind of love that Claire gave to her husband, wife, children, sister and friends. And that love can never be replaced.
Life does feel empty without that love, it really does.
Coaching mode engage!
What does that love get for ME?
It’s that sense of warmth, that spreads out and surrounds me, like putting on a really thick woolly jumper in the middle of a cold dark night.
That warmth of lying in a steaming hot bath and feeling the stress soak and relax away in to the water.
That warmth of a huge hug from the person you desperately love.
And once again as I think about it now, the picture of an island all alone and stranded comes to mind. Yet that same island is surrounded by the warm and relaxing sea that Claire loved so much.
I’m going to buy a big picture of an island and hang it on the wall, it’ll remind me of that love each time I walk past it.
Love isn’t something that emanates in a physical sense from another person, if it were then we wouldn’t feel loved when they left the room. Love is something that endures in the absence of that person… so if that’s true I am loved by a wife and the kids are loved by a mum – we just are!