Let Love Bloom

Last week was a painful time for our DMD community. Over five days, we lost five beautiful young men ending it with the loss one of our most well-known warriors, Darius.  For those of us parents who grapple with anticipatory grief on a regular basis, the search for our own answers or at least a believable spin becomes paramount for our survival. Or at least for mine.

After spending some time being still, this is what I heard…. perhaps the purpose of the great loves of our life are not so we will have them forever but simply so we will continue to grow from them. In looking for our farm for the lessons, I see annual plants which are so abundant when they impact the garden so richly, we wonder why they aren't meant to last. Unlike the perineal, they are only here for a too short season of our life. But when they do die off, they go back into the soil and create a richer more bountiful source for the next love to bloom. Maybe that’s love too.  Maybe love isn’t meant to stay the same, maybe it’s meant to elevate us, change us and make us richer for the next time.

I have certainly had some meaningful loss: my mother, my aunt, and several close friends. And with each heartbreaking loss, the love remained and made me able to love more deeply. I have no way to even begin to comprehend the loss of a child although I think of it often. All I can do is hope the love which has been so carefully cultivated, like the richest of soil, becomes so fertile the most precious of blooms are able to grow in its place. Hope doesn't promise, but maybe it's the fertilizer needed to attract the light. And we have to ask, why live in the dark when there’s an option of light? If we aren't planted in a space the light can reach, we extinguish all possibility for the perineal right below the surface, just waiting for permission to bloom once again.