“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.“
-David Viscott
My child loves to watch Bluey, a for-all-ages cartoon from Australia about a heeler dog named Bluey and her family (mum, dad, and younger sister, Bingo). One episode, “Sleepytime,” deals with the inevitable challenges of sleeping through the night. At the start of “Sleepytime,” Bingo (age 4), has decided that she is ready to sleep by herself, without her mom. As Bingo sleeps, she has a series of dreams set in space.
In one scene, Bingo is suddenly warmed by the large, approaching sun. In reality, her mom has come to snuggle Bingo in bed. But, Bingo musters her bravery, and tells the sun (aka mum) that she is going to sleep alone that night. The sun fades away, and with it goes the warmth and light. Despite the lack of sun, Bingo settles in for the remainder of the night by herself.
Love feels so warm when it is upon us. Whether it’s in the physical warmth of a touch, or the internal feeling we have of core-warming heat when we think of, or are in the presence of, a person we love and who loves us.
When that love disappears (i.e., the force that provides us love is absent), things can feel a bit shady and cool. While we can exist in this shady spot away from the person we love and who loves us, in life, that shade is a temporary experience. Once we reunite with our person, that sunny warmth is renewed.
In grief, however, we are left in shady cool. It becomes a painful reminder of what is permanently absent from our life. It’s easy to step away from the sun for a moment, knowing that we can reconnect with it at another point. When that reconnection is no longer possible, it can feel like we are doomed to exist in love-less, shady, cold forevermore.
And while we may not want to remember: love, as David Viscott reminds us, is a two-way street. The sun shines from both sides: inside and outside of us.
Our love for our person still burns within us despite their death. Our grief is our love left behind. The love burns a bit hotter and maybe more painfully when our grief flares up. At other times, the embers of our love smolder, providing us warm memories of a relationship we still cherish and miss. It is okay to still love them, to miss them, and to relish the warm, loving memories of them.
Our inner love-warmth is sometimes enough, and sometimes just isn’t. The love we are missing is the sun that helped us bloom, grow, live, and thrive. It’s hard to think of how we can possibly continue on without it. Our sun. Our warmth. Our safety.
As trite an example as “Sleepytime” may be when it comes to discussing the love lost in death, we are left with the same challenge as Bingo: to make it through our dark night(s) by ourselves. Getting used to existing without that warmth can be a struggle. After all, how will we continue to bloom, live, and thrive if not for that central sun, that big love?
It takes a lot of courage and bravery to do so. And it takes a lot of other suns.
We are lucky enough to have a multitude of suns in our personal galaxies, love from friends and family. The trick is, of course, to make sure our support network is full of suns that want to see us thrive in our post-loss life, who will shine on us even when we are at our worst and when we need love the most. They will never replace the love from our main sun, and when our inner love (grief) is overwhelmed by the knowledge of that permanency, we need our other suns the most.
Who are the suns in your life after loss? How can you spend some time in their glow this week?