Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love.
Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound, when every day our waking opens it anew.
Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this—
as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it,
as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still,
as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless.
— Blessing for the Broken Hearted — Jan Richardson
As we have moved past the 18 month mark of our loss, and Quinn's 2nd birthday in heaven, her 7th birthday, I continue to reflect on the strangeness of time.
Time takes us farther away from the epicenter of the event, but is it stretches on, it also seems to contract into itself. How can it be as long as it has been, when I can still see her so clearly within my mind and my heart? I can vividly envision how I feel when she hugs me. How it feels when I put my arm around her as we watch TV on the couch. The warmth of her body and the feeling of her hair. I hope it never fades from my mind, but I am sure as time continues to stretch that it will.
I'm not sure how I have survived this. I guess it makes sense to say I didn't survive this. I am a new version of myself, a version I am still learning about every day. It is truly the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating.