Life is full of change.
One of the most challenging changes is when people leave this world.
It does not matter if they are a parent, a child, a brother, sister or friend.
Meeting that change in our lives can be tough.
When we feel we have lost someone, it always hurts.
When we can no longer touch them, they are gone to us.
We struggle to find a way to fill that void.
Yet nothing can ever replace that unique human being.
We feel the loss, and it pains us.
As much as we take consolation in others, it is never the same.
For the people left behind there is an emptiness.
And as we grow older, there are more and more people we know that are leaving this world.
No matter how it happens, it doesn’t get any easy.
Perhaps there is a better way to consider it?
Maybe we can shift our perspective to take a different view of life and death.
For as long as we remember the person in our heart, they still live on.
We may not be able to call them, but we can talk to them whenever we wish.
Our relationship with them changes and shifts, but it does not end.
The relationship continues until we transition as well.
Our hearts are big enough to hold all of the people we love in our lives.
Our hearts are strong enough to remember and embrace everyone we have lost.
It does not have to be an end.
The relationship can transform as well.
It can grow into something new and different.
We can finally say all the things we had been thinking but never told them.
Perhaps we can’t hold them with arms anymore.
Yet we can still hold them in our hearts.
Love does not know time and space.
And we can carry our love for those we have lost until the end of our days.
And who knows what waits on the other side?
And one thing is for certain.
With each transition, with each change we experience, we learn to soften.
To be more gentle with the people around us.
And appreciate what and who we have all that much more.
So who have you lost that you still carry in your heart?
~ Sam Liebowitz, The Conscious Consultant