loss

she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone.

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.

Nos-tal-gic,_ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for __ostalgic._ __os-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very important.___eally, old fellow?___mportant. Very important. Nostalgic. When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again. So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, Father, close to me. in our house.__e fell silent and continued to gaze across the rubble.__kira,_ I said, sensing that the longer this talk went on, the greater was some danger I did not wish fully to articulate. __e should move on. We have much to do.

I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room

I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.

one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.

From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.

When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. But grief is the ultimate unrequieted love. However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels...

And when she at last came out, her eyes were dry. Her parents stared up from their silent breakfast at her. They both started to rise but she put a hand out, stopped them. __ can care for myself, please,_ and she set about getting some food. They watched her closely. In point of fact, she had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, and an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering. She was eighteen. She was the most beautiful woman in a hundred years. She didn__ seem to care. __ou__e all right?_ her mother asked. Buttercup sipped her cocoa. __ine,_ she said. __ou__e sure?_ her father wondered. __es,_ Buttercup replied. There was a very long pause. __ut I must never love again._ She never did.

A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her.

If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?

Champions realise that defeat - and learning from it even more than from winning - is part of the path to mastery.

We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.

How do you wipe away pain? You don__. You put in tenderness, compassion and joy. You cling to hope and then you offer everything to God. And you wait, with faith you see all things anew _ light shines out from darkness, happiness grows through every pain, and all things become indeed so very beautiful in His time.

The deepest wounds of the soul are healed only by compassion... People do not merely need to be clothed, they need to be embraced with love. A love that enters into their own fears and frailty, a love that suffers with them and stays with them through their darkest hour.

There at the cross, we see all pain and darkness conquered in such a way that it is defeated forever. Not by disregarding it. Not by denying it. But by giving value even to our tears. By loving everything about us, including our very worst hurts.

Long before we even lose our lives, we lose our souls. Tragic but true. Some carry on__illing to make the sacrifices, putting what is perceived as important before anything else. Some tread into the dark__asting moments of grace, letting themselves suffer from their own decisions or the other__ domination. Some continue to love, give too much, and not leave even a little love for themselves.

Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power ... that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.