Commitment to love

Can you commit to love with the same intensity that a hater commits to hate?

Can I?

Can we?

I find that to be an amazing challenge, personally. So ... thinking it through, musing ... Hate is an easy emotion, automatic for many of us. It saves us from hurt, from working through whatever brought it up - fear, anger, hurt, betrayal. But love - has to be intentional ... and then ... just as easy! Turning an emotion outward, just the same, rather than letting something eat away inside. Turning out an emotion that is safer, and healing as well. Tell ourselves that story ... of hurt, fear, anger, betrayal... turning out love. Tell ourselves the story of a hero with the strength to do that rather than giving in to the old story of revenge and destruction. Tell the story of a beloved friend or advisor who takes the hero, battered and hurting and full of hate, and quietly tells them his own story of replacing the self-loathing and carnage caused by revenge and destruction, with an amazing inner strength that came from realising that love and cooperation is so much more powerful and productive.

I visited you today. Did you know?

I suspect not. I didn't feel you around anywhere.

I look down and think of you being cosy and safe in there, under the ground and the sprinkling of crusher dust or stones or whatever they are.

I wonder why they are there - to stop the soil being eroded maybe.

I know it's not cosy down there, but the thought makes it all more bearable somehow.

It seemed appropriate to visit today when the day is so very grey ... and yet as soon as that thought came I dismissed it.  Because, despite everything, you shine - you shone then and you shine now - a beautiful , strong, glow of love and of life.

I was happy to notice the flowers today.  I missed them somehow the last visits and on the day you were buried.  Were they there then?  I don't know, but I'm glad they are there now.  I've a long way to go with my photography!!  But here, as in life, you have colour around you.

I like that view as I talk to you.  Behind us, it's a bit gloomy, but the trees remind me of home and they are so Australian - and no doubt they block out the noise of the freeway just behind them.  

And opposite those, beyond the flowers and the headstones is the suburb - known for its low-income families, retirees, single mums fighting to raise decent kids - wait - that was you, once.  You lived there in one of your escapes.  Perhaps this really is going home for you.

You really did do a hugely good job, surviving the stress and horrible times and raising such beautiful kids.  I think you probably know that and always did - particularly where the kids were concerned.  I just wish you hadn't had to pay such a price.  But then you bore it with such good grace, such good grace.  

  

I'm not sure why I visit this place, when I can talk to you any time, any where.  It just seems right - paying homage, maybe, focusing on you and all that you stood for, and all that you gave.  

And this is what we coaxed and prodded for - a place to visit you.  Thank you so much for allowing it.