Posting intimate thoughts

I have come to appreciate that blogging allows people to post their most intimate and personal thoughts for all the world to see. Within the past two days three blogfriends have posted their anguish about friends or family who have died, were dying, or left.

These posts affected me in a meaningful way because even though I have never met these three blogfriends face-to-face, I still felt their agony. And, I understood it.

In looking at the comments left by these blogfriends' correspondents, I found nothing trite or mocking in their heartfelt posts. At first I felt shy about leaving any sort of comment, but also felt saying nothing would have meant I didn't care enough to give that part of me that I could -- my sympathy for their pain.

Each of us has regrets and sorrows about things that have happened to us. We also handle grief differently. Some of us cry while watching emotional or touching scenes in movies and some of us have hardened our hearts over the grieving process. We grieve for a lost family member or loved one, even a pet, or we grieve over incidents that we had no control over. Grieving is about loss and we all handle this emotion in our own unique way.

I'm a big crier, always have been and always will be. The first time I was faced with the death of a family member was when I was about 24. One morning my mother woke me up and said that my grandfather -- my beloved grandfather who I absolutely adored -- had died. I started crying right there in front of my mother and the suddenness of my emotions took me completely by surprise. I don't think that my mother held me, patted me on the arm, or even said she understood. Later, at the funeral, when I saw my grandfather in his casket I broke down crying and could not stop. The pain I felt was like a knife piercing my heart. This emotion was so intense, I tear up just thinking about it.

To this day I don't think I have ever been affected so profoundly by death. My grandfather's passing caused me to re-examine my beliefs about death and dying, heaven and hell, and what life is all about.

We live on this earth but a heartbeat in the whole vast scheme of life. We cannot go back and change anything, we cannot live other people's lives for them, and we cannot prevent bad things from happening to others. It's all about destiny. Que sera, sera.

What we can do is appreciate every single day we have been alloted in this Heaven on Earth and love our family and friends with all our hearts. Love, beauty, kindness, and compassion are the only things that matter.