A Quiet Stirring: When Love Awakens the Soul

I think I met someone, someone that has stirred, and awakened my soul to love and to be loved. I am not quite sure what to think because it’s not even confirmed or official. It just is, there, like a silent whisper, yet powerful, as if the entire world has conspired. And if I may say so, a nudge from my mentor.

However this turns out, it has awakened something in me. I find myself contemplating the future and what I would ask for or give up. For my entire life, I have focused on myself, me, myself, and my son, the sole purpose of my being. Without him, I wouldn’t have had the desire to work so hard to become the person I am today. Even though I admit that fight has always been there, who knows how long it would have taken me to get to this place if I hadn’t had him young.

At the Edge of 35: A New Kind of Love

I am turning 35 years of age in July, and I can only think: what if it is finally here? The reason to hold another soul, to nurture, cherish, and love, just as I have done for the last 17 years raising my son. It’s these thoughts that bring me peace, knowing I have more in me. I am willing to share a part of myself that will love someone through the good and the bad.

Even if it turns out to be nothing, I am forever grateful to find my way back to this person I had lost. These last 18 months shook my core and foundation. Losing someone so fundamental to this chapter of my life has been a kind of pain I can’t explain. I’ve experienced loss before, many times over, some so tragically violent, but this one, I just can’t wrap my mind around.

Each time I acknowledge it, the pain bubbles underneath the surface, waiting to finally spill over. I haven’t been able to process it the way I should, especially being in school these last 14 months, which is why I’m taking time off this summer.

The Weight of Grief, the Will to Remember

I had thrown myself into being the perfect student, perhaps to push back the fact that someone I deeply loved was sick. And I knew she was sick, before she knew how sick she was. Even when she told me doctors had ruled things out, I knew deep down it was just because they hadn’t found it yet.

Perhaps this summer will at least allow me to reconcile with the fact that I will, if fortunate and blessed, have to live another 50 years without her. That has been painful to accept, but it’s something I need to do nonetheless. Especially considering how much I love the idea of creating something in her memory.

A Foundation of Love and Legacy

I’ve been reflecting and toying with an idea in the back of my mind for years, and had even talked to her about it, and that is starting a foundation or grant for parents with sick children in the hospital. I know what it’s like to almost lose a child to illness while juggling the stress of expenses, living costs, and sleeping, living, and breathing the hospital.

I never left my child’s side, except for some “forced” air outside the hospital. So if anything, that grant I would start would perhaps be in her name, for parents of sick children, specifically single parents, and for cancer patients, which is what took her life.

I’ve already come up with the name of the foundation and am prepared to amend it if I meet someone for the long term, where we both contribute. I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty that the person who has been on my mind is the one who will do this with me, but I also can’t say with one hundred percent certainty that they won’t be.

Loss and Legacy: Walking with the Ones Who’ve Left Us

Either way, losses are never easy. They just fade a little more into the background, but they are still there, standing next to you, watching you, rooting you on, standing with your ancestors. And the thought of that, the acknowledgment of that, is enough until we cross their paths again.