A silent promise

When heartbreak feels like too much, is it time to lock away your heart?

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

When Elene started getting really sick, I made a silent promise: "I will never love anyone or anything, so I never have to hurt like this again”. It sounded neat and easy. And just felt safer that way.

Father Orlando, who I’d not even met until the day of Elene’s funeral, started her funeral homily as if he read my mind:

”It is often said that “grief is the price we pay for love”. Nobody wants to grieve, but grief and love cannot exist without each other. If you love someone, the fact is that while that love may never end, the relationship and their physical presence inevitably will one day. We grieve because we love, and the deeper the love one experiences, the more profound the grief will be. When we love deeply, we grieve deeply.

Though if you were to ask if yourself: Would you trade the love you experienced so that you wouldn’t have to feel the grief you endure today? Would you trade all those cherished memories so that you wouldn’t have to go through the pain of death and loss? I imagine that your answer will undoubtedly be “no”.”

I shuffled in my chair before settling on not heckling at my mum’s funeral.

Not “undoubtedly” Father O: I tell you the pain of death and loss is big, real, large and long.

Like so many feelings, I buried my promise never to love again. Under-the-carpet-style. Weeks of sleeping on the floor of Elene’s room bunked in with my sister, like high school roommates, left a giant, hollowed-out void. My nights were calmer, quiet and a whole lot emptier. I continued to ache all over.

While you can never replace someone, and no one as epic as Elene, I’ve really been trying my best.

Nine days after her funeral, and not a few months after my “no-more-new love, ever” promise, I clipped the lead to the collar of a foster rescue dog, Alfonzo. A 32-kilo, black, injured racing dog with ears held to the side and a slightly wary look. I loaded him into the back of the wagon.

The dog rescue service understood when I explained I needed to love again. To show myself I could and, more than anything, to keep feeling needed overnight.

The following week, he slept at my feet while I slept on the couch downstairs to stop him from freaking out. He followed me on every bathroom visit, peering patiently around the door until the flush.

He would always walk me back to the couch, watch me put on the covers, and only then would he take his rest. It was enough for him that we were together. His black kennel coat, sparkling dark eyes, looking over at me, helping me in so many ways.

He has a nasty broken leg, which bends to the side and has the outline of being shaved and stitched back together. He knows pain too.

When I give him circle-patterned pats on his butt, while he is sound asleep, he doesn’t even open his eye. He knows the feeling. It’s familiar now.

Now, back to Father Orlando, but this time to the ending of his homily.

“Grief is a sign that this world is ultimately not enough. A perfectly happy life is not this one, that heaven is more real than this one…where there are no more tears, no more suffering.”

“Go forth, beloved, mother, grandmother, sister, and friend. May you live in peace this day. May your home be with God in heaven. And by his loving mercy, may you find rest in the shores of everlasting life. Amen.”

Amen alright.