Inspired

I love to read.  I've talked about it before.  Mostly I read for entertainment, but lately I've read a couple of inspirational books and one or two grief support books.  And they've been great reads.  But today as I was reading, I was blown away by a paragraph in one of my "entertainment" books and I just had to share it.  It's kind of long, but it's worth reading.

"Grief can destroy you--or focus you.  You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone.  Or you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it.  But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill.  It was everything, it was the why of live, every event and precious moment of it.  The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss.  And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life."
--Odd Thomas, Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Wow!  That's all I can say.  Maybe it didn't touch you the way it touched me.  In the quote, Odd is talking about the loss of a spouse or significant other, but it seems to fit every loss to me, the loss of a parent, child or just a good friend.  And as much as it makes me think about the short time we had with Logan, it also makes me think about my parents, my sister, Doug, and some of my best friends.  Because the fact is that eventually I will lose them, or they will lose me.  And it won't matter if we had 100 years together, it won't have been enough time. 

I am praying every day that we all learn to appreciate every moment of our lives and not to take any part of it or any person in it for granted.