True Love

A tangled mess or a web of red, how love thrives is in its dwelling in everything.

In 2021, I fell into my own rabbit hole of non-fiction books. All of which were about people describing their loss and grief of a loved one, and they inspired me to look closely at this specific type of suffering in general.

Surprisingly, their stories focused on love as a means to directly cope with emotional pain.

These books weren’t about meditation, psychological therapy and/or medication, though the scientific evidence will support these practices. Instead, the writers were grappling with reality their own unique way, recalling their beloved memories and creating an interpretation of the events of their life through the lens of love.

In The Baby Loss Guide by Zoe Clark-Coates, she writes, ‘many associate the pain they are feeling with the loss they have experienced, and therefore fear letting go of the pain. They worry that if they don’t experience agony, they won’t feel close to the person/child they have lost Let me reassure you: your loved one isn’t in pain, they are in the love. The love that will never end. The love that will never dissipate. The love that will never be hidden. The pain can leave, the tears can go, and you will still be forever connected by your endless, everlasting love.’

The handbag in the pictures was a DIY project to depict this concept of a string of love originating from an infinite source, which makes it an unbreakable bond. This red string concept tied in neatly with the playful painting of a teddy bear with a red bow, which was inspired by Hanna’s Gift by Maria Housden – a book about a mother who lost her eight-year-old to cancer.

In the book, she remembers Hannah vividly through her red mary janes, which were shoes Hannah loved and wore till she passed, and it became a symbol of her joy and light in spite of the fears she experienced embracing death since she was diagnosed at two-years old. Though Hannah’s life was short-lived, her mother spreads the message that ‘the truest measure of a life is not its length, but the fullness in which it is lived.’

Hanna’s gift to her mother was none other than the eternal connection of love, which allowed her to heal and bring more love into the world.

Another book I read was a memoir by Tim Elliot called Farewell to the Father, and it was about the traumatic childhood the author experienced as a result of his father’s mental illness.

Though his father met his fate without his family by his side, the author contemplated and concluded that he did very much love his dad till the end, ‘I wanted to save him. The pain of failing never goes away. It recedes but never completely disappears, like a man you pass on the beach as you walk the other way, getting smaller and smaller. When you stop and look back, you see how far you have come, further than you thought, and you see that he is still there, but very small, and far, far away.’

Love doesn’t disappear but the opposite; these red strings spread like wildfire till the whole body and everything around it are broken down and remodelled into love.

I realized how these stories fit closely with my parents’ story.

My mother grew up in poverty and in fear of her abusive alcoholic father. But with my father, they created a loving family of their own where everything we ever needed was provided. They knew love was the only answer to the things of the past, and this love spread to everyone in the community.

Further, my parents had to make a difficult decision within a year of their marriage due to my mom’s severe medical issues during pregnancy… and it’s an event that, we learned, will never truly leave. They received a very small gift, though lifeless, was anything but – instead, it lives on and on.

And having both lost a parent in a year in 2019, they had their fair share of pain and loss. They found consolation through their beliefs in eternal life and that one day, they would meet again, but more importantly in their suffering and trust in the Lord – the very source of all love.

Today, on Valentine’s day, is their 27th year anniversary. I congratulate them for their many years of love and I pray for many more years I get to spend with them.

I am grateful for our daily exchanges of love, and even if these will become a memory one day, I know it will never be “just a memory” because of these invisible threads which have covered my whole universe.