Souls

There is a Western series I am currently watching and hooked on week to week. Recently, the episodes have become deeply involved with character content and have shown us, the viewer, what love and loss looks and feels like. The main character, Elsa, a young pioneer woman along this journey with her parents and other pioneers looking for a new home within this new United States back in 1883. Along this much complicated journey full of death and sorrow and dangers, Elsa finds love. Young love, something we all have gone through some way or another. It’s innocent, it’s exciting, it’s so intense and passionate at times. She experiences this in an episode and we are taken along this ride with her as she falls in love with her new beau and they playful and intimate moments that give us, the viewer, the warm feeling inside along with them. However, this is the Wild West, so to speak, and just as quickly as a person can die from a snake bite or the elements, no one was immune to a gun fight that could result in death. Cutting to the chase, Enis, her new love, was killed in a gun fight. His darling Elsa grieved for him and felt that horrible pain of loss and despair. She was desperate for healing and understanding of his death and her pain. There is a line from the show that goes like this, “When you love somebody, you trade souls with them. They get a piece of yours and you get a piece of theirs. But when your love dies, a little piece of you dies with them.” When I heard that I wept because it explained to me what I felt the day Alan died. It feels like a part of you dies with them, it truly does. You ache and you cry and then you cry some more until you are exhausted and dehydrated but no amount of comfort can come from anything or anyone. You mourn everything that was and could have been. You blame yourself for words spoken in hurt and anger and you “what if” in your head every day. You question yourself, your decisions then and now, and of course, there is God. The questions you have for him, the anger and despair. I am still on that journey with HIM, so maybe I will never understand, but I won’t ever stop asking “Why Alan.” There are friends and family that do their best to explain how Alan’s soul is with us, his heavenly being is in heaven and his earthly body remains buried. What about the part of his soul that remains with me? I cherish that part of Alan that I knew for 16 years. That part of him that bared his soul to me and shared his life on earth with me. We, together, accomplished a lot in our marriage, in the lives of our successful children and in our careers. I have said this before, I will always be thankful for sitting front row to the last 16 years of his life. He taught me what true love feels like and how it should look like when a parent loves their children wholeheartedly. I believe I hold on to his soul until my last breathe. He took a piece of mine the day he went home but I know we will meet again and both be whole, his soul and mine, reunited in Heaven. I cling to the part of him that remains here on earth, my Lili. I think the same is true when it comes to our children, especially for moms. We give them life inside our bodies, our blood together for those 9 months. It’s beautiful to share your body so intimately with another human being and then bring them into the world as your masterpiece. I will always love Alan and cherish the little piece of joy from our daughter and a part of his soul that I will always protect and love in my happiest and saddest moments.