Are Love and Sorrow Inseparable?

Twenty-one years ago today my father died of a heart attack. I was fifteen years old. The whole family was getting ready to spend the day riding roller coasters and working on our sunburns at Lagoon. My dad drove down to the ATM to get some cash and took my brother Josh with him. Josh was eight.

About two blocks from our house, dad pulled the car over and told Josh he felt sick. He opened the car door and leaned out to throw up. Then he didn't sit back up. Josh started to feel awkward because dad was leaning out of the car so long and not answering him. Then dad slowly slid out of the car onto the road and the car started rolling down the hill without a driver.

I don't know how they stopped the car. I only know I was in our front yard when someone stopped and said my dad had been in an accident just down the road. I didn't wait for anyone. I ran in the direction they pointed. I remember thinking how stupid I was for running barefoot on the gravel-covered asphalt because little rocks were stabbing my feet. I only got about half way there before my mom pulled up in the car and I jumped in.

When we got there the ambulance had already taken my dad away.

That's not the part that makes me sad, though.

Twenty-one years later my mother still misses him every day. She was a single mom for ten years and then for the past eleven years she has been married to my step-dad, who I think is a great guy. But she still reminisces with me a couple of times a week about how she misses my dad.

A couple of nights ago she watched The Notebook on TV. If she just wanted pain, she could have thrown herself down the stairs. It would have been quicker.

I found her wandering out to the kitchen looking for somewhere to be alone. How do you tell your new husband that you're sobbing uncontrollably because you miss your first husband so much?

But her story isn't as sad as my grandmother's.

My grandfather died a few years ago. It was sad, but he had lived a full life and he was close to ninety years old.

For a couple of years both he and my grandmother had been wondering which of them would outlive the other. One day my grandfather woke up and he couldn't shake grandma awake. It was the most terrifying ten minutes of his life before she finally came around and told him to go away and stop bugging her so she could sleep.

Grandma's alzheimers had gotten pretty bad. She would put food on to cook and then turn it off when the smoke alarm went off. So she never remembered grandpa dying.

When my own father died, it was an incredible blow. We were all sitting in a room at the hospital, waiting for news. My older, married sisters and their families were there, too. I was numb. Dad had already survived other heart attacks and strokes. In my fifteen-year-old mind that meant he could just shrug these things off and keep right on going. But I remember looking around and seeing a look of complete terror on my brother Mike's face. When the doctor came in and said, "I'm sorry..." Mike started wailing immediately. I was angry because Mike hadn't even let the doctor finish his sentence and I was sure he still had more to say about what they were still trying or what his chances were. I was in denial. Mike wasn't.

Grandma had to go through that process every day for almost a year. She would wake up and wander around looking for Tom until she found someone that had to break the news to her all over again that Tom had died. She was always furious. Why hadn't they let her go with them to the hospital? She didn't remember any of it, so she didn't believe them, and she was a wreck every day.

Luckily my aunt had taken pictures at the hospital, so they eventually made up a poster board of the story. It included pictures of grandma standing next to his hospital bed while the doctors worked. Grandma would sit and stare at that board for hours every morning, trying and trying to remember it. But after a few hours she would accept it. She was terribly sad, but she went on.

Sometimes I think my father and my grandfather got the easy way out. But I picture them sitting a few feet away, watching this parade of anguish, helpless to comfort the ones they love and miss most.

Is that how love always leaves us? Is love a set of immovable tracks leading to an inevitable train wreck? Does anyone truly love without true suffering?

I don't have the answers. But I know love is better than the alternative. I've been on both roads, and I know it is far better to miss someone and ache with loss than to feel completely alone and not have anyone you even miss.

As for me, I know I will cherish every moment I can with someone who loves me. Children, parents, family. They all will be gone someday. The worst thing that could happen would be to have all the loss without having juiced every possible bit of joy from the happy moments.