Hello Praveen
Hello Mary09
My heart really goes out to each of you.
I am truly sorry that you are going through this.
My wife and I are about to leave town to visit family.
My wife's sister passed away last year.
Our nieces are struggling and we are trying to comfort them.
I think that there is a serendipitous synchronicity that brings us all together in these forums.
I use that expression to avoid saying something religious that might not "sit well" with some folks.
Yes we all suffer in our own way. But knowing that we are not alone does bring some comfort, does it not?
Just the fact that in our own pain we can reach out to another, seems to light a wee candle in our heart.
I wrote a poem to this effect and I share it. I hope that it brings comfort to you.
- eKim
The Path and the Candle
There are over seven billion humans on planet earth on seven billion paths.
No two humans travel the same path and no two paths are identical.
Our unique path follows our individual experiences of life.
Sometimes we are happy and sometimes we are sad. Sometimes we are afraid.
That is the nature of the path.
On our path, we each carry a tiny candle which lights up only a small area directly in front of us.
There is only enough light for the next step ahead.
Although we travel our path alone, we need not be lonely, yet some humans are. Why?
There are those who stare at their own candle and the next step ahead of them.
Their pupils constrict and they cannot see much other than their own candle.
Wrapped up in themselves, they cannot see what or who is around them.
Their focus is too near.
There are others who gaze up to the stars and see millions of lights.
As their pupils dilate they ponder if the stars are wanderers just like themselves.
Wrapped up in the unknown, they cannot see what or who is around them.
Their focus is too far.
Then there are those of us who choose not to be lonely as we journey along our path.
We look ahead and in doing so we are peripherally aware of other lights just like our own.
They twinkle and glow like fireflies in the night. Some lights are near. Some lights are far.
Every so often one of the lights comes very near to us, or perhaps we come very near to it.
We notice that it is a candle, just like ours carried by another human, not too different from us.
We pause, we observe, we wonder.
We notice that their candle only lights up a small portion of their path ahead of them, just like our own.
As we come closer to one another, we place our wee candles side by side.
Lo and behold, we each can see twice as far as before.
And now we no longer feel lonely or afraid.
Our focus has been made just right.
- eKim