[Bridger]

I lost my daughter this year, but that is not what I really want to talk about here. I just want you to know that I know loss and grief first hand, too. What I want to share is a revelation that actually helped me to deal with it.

In my last relationship, I was the second man. I shared a woman for nearly a decade with a ghost from the past, hanging on the wall, tales told of fatherhood and kindness before he died


I listened to them with patience and compassion. And when she found the strength to do so, in little tiny pieces, she let go, she let her tears flow and embraced both his memory and myself firmly.

They were high school sweethearts, each others first. It was special and it was perfect, just not meant to be. Their daughter was six months old when she saw him being pulled out of the ocean, drowned.


And that pain, it will never go away completely. But the guilt and the suffering can. It's so hard to see it when you're inside it, but there is profound beauty in that pain.


It's a reflection of the love you feel and a memory you still hold close to you, a memory kept alive, and that is all the dead can ask of us. They are remembered and live on in us and how they changed us, what they gave us and what we shared before they had to go. We give them a part of us in life, and we give them a part of us after they are gone... and in that act I see something beautiful, a beauty that can be embraced, than act as a catalyst for transformation from misery to acceptance.

[Leed]

Thank you for sharing that with us. I lost my husband several years ago, and he does live on in my heart and he always will. A part of me went with him when he died ~ as it should be.

I'm so sorry for the loss of your beloved daughter. That kind of pain I do not know, thank God. My prayers are with you. God bless and take care. Hugs, Lee