L is for love
All you need is love. Love is all you need. –The Beatles
In 2008, I am going to simply open my heart.
I have learned much about life from two women. The first was Meta, a young woman who died on September 14, 2006, in a tragic accident. She was just 20 years old. Her mother, MaryAnne, was diagnosed three months later with breast cancer. Having battled cancer for a year, MaryAnne is now dying. She is dying surrounded by great and deep love as she walks right toward her journey.
What I have realized from this daughter and her mother, two women, one dead and one now dying, is that there is nothing but love. That all you need is love. And love is all you need.
Sometimes we go about getting love in odd ways. Sometimes it isn’t all that healthy, the ways in which we love, the ways in which we seek or expect or demand love. Sometimes we confuse love with other things. And sometimes, sometimes it is real and honest and deep and sustaining through the worst of times.
When MaryAnne was diagnosed with cancer, several friends spearheaded the creation of a heart quilt for her, to keep her warm and mindful of the deep outpouring of love that was coming her way and that is still pouring out to her in these, her final days in this form. Dozens of beautiful squares poured in from around the globe—some from quilters who knew what they were doing, and others from people like me who had never made a quilt square. We made it up as we went along, stitching without skill, perhaps, and with raveling edges whose ravels themselves became art, and with enormous love and hope, for her and for us. The love shines through when you look at the fantastic colors and shapes and images, and all that is behind them, stitched into them.
There is nothing but love. Not a needy or grasping or jealous or possessive love, but an open one. One in which we can walk toward the most unlovable person and love them. One in which we can express our love, not hide it, in which we can feel love for people whose homelessness knocks us off balance, for bosses who seem tyrannical, for children who, in their growing up, do things that scare us.
Friends were invited to send messages to MaryAnne in these last, furiously fast days of her transition. What do we say to those dying? And what keeps us from saying it now? Is it that everything falls short in the face of death? Is that why we deny and ignore and run from it? Perhaps, instead, nothing falls short in the face of death. These were questions I had during the 37days of my stepfather’s death.
I tried my best to express what was in my heart to MaryAnne and I hope it has brought her some peace or joy or knowing, though she is in a far better position to bring me knowing:
Dearest MaryAnne,
Though I speak from a place of not-knowing, it seems to me that we have many homes. One is the space in which we live and love while we are alive on this earth. I am glad you have come back to your home for the next steps on your journey. One is the home we inhabit in the hearts of those we love and those who love us. It is clear you have always been in that home and always will be. One is the home we share with those who have died before us. There is no doubt you are in Meta’s heart and she in yours…that she will be with you in these next steps of your journey. And one is the home that is ours alone, the heart of hearts that is filled with everything we are, even those parts of who we are that no one else knows, not by omission or hiding, but by grace.
Your journey is a great and awesome one. For it, I wish you great peace and love and comfort and joy.
As you know so well, the hard work is being left behind. We grieve but with great joy for your living, and with you always—always—in our hearts. Death ends a life, not a relationship. As Australian aboriginal Ginevee has written, “At each stage of learning we must give up something, even if it is a way of life we have always known.” We will learn much from you, as we all did from Meta.
Your relationships–with Meta, with Raj, with Deb, and with all those you love–doesn’t end here. May they take great comfort in that, as do I.
With great love,
Patti
Open your heart to MaryAnne. Hold a space in your heart for her in these important days. Please pray in whatever way you do that she has a peaceful passage to be with her beloved Meta. Keep her in your thoughts and in your heart. It will help her.
Intentions: To simply open my heart to people I know and don’t know. To create a heart quilt that is pure and deep and keeps us warm.
From the last alphabet challenge: L is for little
[Hat tip to A Piece of Peace for the video linked to in the opening quote.]
