Hurts So Good

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Mortality sucks. Who set things up this way? So we can love and love—and still lose?

Does love ever save anybody? ( I mean, even save ‘em for a little while, of course, since we’re all mortal ). Maybe from suicide, it can, but probably only if love itself caused the suicidal despair.

When we see someone we love dying….what? What do we do, what can we? Nothing.

I reckon love is always more important to the giver than to the recipient.

Here’s a poem I’m thinking of tonight:

“Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink,/Nor slumber, nor a roof against the rain,/Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink/And rise and sink and rise and sink again./Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,/Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone-/But many a man is making friends with death/Even as I speak, for lack of love alone./ it may well be that, in a difficult hour/ Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,/Or nagged by want past resolution’s power/I might be driven to sell your love for peace,/Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It may well be. I do not think I would.”

—Edna St Vincent Millay

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Published by Hypatia

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18 thoughts on “Hurts So Good”

  1. “I reckon love is always more important to the giver than to the recipient.”

    I had never thought of it this way. Why do you think this, Hypatia?

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    1. Because I remember the feeling when my husband had a health issue, the desperate feeling like where will all this love of mine GO? it’ll dam up inside me and kill me…
      And in the end of the poem, the poet talks about her own memory of love, her own feelings. I think it’s accurate.

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      1. “the desperate feeling like where will all this love of mine GO? it’ll dam up inside me and kill me…”

        I had never thought of it that way, but I think I know what you mean, now that I think of it. I had the strangest, most horrible dream a little while after Robin died. I dreamed that I was in my old school yard, on a cold, windy March day. I was totally alone-the only person on earth, and all I could think of was Robin. He was nowhere to be found, and no one else was anywhere to be found either. In this dream, Robin was all I cared about-no one else mattered, but he wasn’t there and no one else was there either. I was totally alone.

        I told a therapist about this dream, and his take on it helped me a great deal. He said, basically, that I should expand the love I have for Robin to include people other than Robin. Now, Robin was never the only person I loved, but the idea of focusing on people other than Robin is still very helpful. This is made much easier by the fact that I know that God exists, I know that Robin is in heaven, and I know that he doesn’t need me to be obsessed with him to the exclusion of everyone else.

        I think that Love is eternal. I think all of us are eternal. I don’t believe in mortality, not really.

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      2. Love is eternal, and hatred is also eternal. Love saves our souls, and it is the only thing that can.

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  2. Are you speaking of your beloved sister?

    I sense of what you speak; my father, aunt, two uncles, a young cousin and too many family friends have left this Earth over the past year. I feel as if I’m living Part II of my life- the first with and the second without my loved ones.

    It is unsettling and I’m working hard to adjust to the change.

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      2. On this for all of us; the hurt changes, but never goes away…l, for one, wouldn’t *want* it to, in case the love and the memories went away with it.

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  3. “Faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.” According to the Bible, love is more important than faith. Loving other people is more important than believing in God, according to the Bible. I am sorry to go on like this, Hypatia, but love does save us. It is the only thing that can.

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    1. Maybe it’s closer to loving other people *because* we love God; since we’re created in His image and likeness? Love, faith, and hope all function to support us in daily life. St. Paul’s ranking doesn’t ask us to stop believing or hoping. Without those things, love would be a pale imitation of itself. (Working on something on St. Paul; can you tell?) 😀

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  4. “The book of life is brief
    And when a page is read,
    All but love is dead.
    That is my belief”

    Don McLean from “And I love you so” lyrics

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      1. I looked it up: Don wrote it, then Como had a hit cover in 1973.
        I’ve seen Don McLean in concert at a fairly small venue. He was so generous! We all sang American Pie along with him for many many choruses!

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