A Lesson in Love and Understanding

This is one of my favorite days of the year! Today Hart would have turned 12 years old! It seems like both yesterday and a million years ago that I held him in my arms. My memories of this sweet little boy fill my heart and soul to just shy of bursting.

I tend to do a lot of self-reflection this time of year; emotional evaluation and periodic mental health checks to make sure the weight of grief is not greater than the weight of remembering. Today, something that has always felt just beyond the grasp of my understanding became crystal clear. I finally realized that the feelings of warmth and light, comfort and love, quiet joy and understanding are what peace feels like. Such a complete and blanketing peace, that it has infiltrated every fiber of my being. It feels like basking in the glow of the most perfect Christmas ever-the one that only exists in the rewritten memories of Christmases past. Simple, satiating, pure and beautiful.

I think that the reason this became so clear, is because of the recent agita-inducing presidential election and the reactions sparked by its outcome. Between my gaper's block Facebook attraction and getting sucked into reading EVERY comment (I really do know better, I promise!) on political stories or posts I came across, I couldn't let go of a desire to understand. Trying to separate from my own life experiences and circumstances in order to wrap my head around the points-of-view of others, was not only frustrating, it was not possible. (And it turns out, some people, with a lot of time on their hands, just enjoy being argumentative, contrary, offensive or unkind-and I can't even pretend to understand that.)

So, when reflections of Hart hijacked my thoughts, I was grateful that there was less time and space to try to dissect the motivations and ambitions of everyone on the internet. In between sweet memories of Hart and recalling the countless kindnesses of friends, I thought about the ineffectiveness of using reason to understand something that is heart-filling and heart-breaking in equal measure. When I reminisced about strangers filling unseen voids and answering unheard calls, I was reminded how difficult it is to cope when your heart is filled, past capacity, with extreme feelings both good and bad. There are many things in life that cannot be made sense of by applying what you know and think. Life experiences or circumstances can only garner limited understanding and acceptance. Then it occurred to me, maybe all of those things that I can't wrap my head around, maybe I'm supposed to wrap my heart around them instead.