Love & Loss

A dear friend of mine is working through his fourth month since his wife of many years passed away from cancer. By no means is he dealing with any kind of hopeless despair (his blog can show you why) but experiencing his grief and loss is certainly the most prominent feature of his life at this time.

At one point he said something I've heard many times before: "better to have loved and lost than not loved at all."

That's something I've never really believed, at least not for my nature and personality. But, oddly enough, I've been having to concede that perhaps that is the only kind of loss of love I would accept if it meant having the kind of love that my friend and his wife so clearly shared when she was alive. I say odd, because I truly cannot imagine a more painful kind of loss - and that loss is only so great because the love was so great - and yet the greatness of the love makes the prospect of such pain worthwhile, or at least bearable.

But I have witnessed other kinds of love lost that I want nothing to do with; and there is where I don't believe it's "better to have loved and lost." There are some things, in my mind, that don't make the loss worthwhile.

Again, that's for myself, anyway. My concession there, though, has to be that maybe I can only say that because I've never been in love and so don't know what I'm missing. But still...from where I stand, it isn't always worth it.

Probably something people would say I need to figure out how to deal with, but oh well. :P