I have lost both of my brothers and my mother to death.
I first lost my brother Mike when I was 21 and he was 20.
It was devastating. We were close. Nearly inseparable.
His death and memory nearly broke me.
Everything in life seemed pointless. And it wasn’t like we didn’t know it could happen. It was coming. Mike and Steve both had Duchene Muscular Dystrophy. But still I was unprepared for it as if a person can actually be prepared for death.
I had a difficult time coming to grip with losing him.
In time, I found the ability to move his memory from my mind to my heart.
What does that mean?
It means, I don’t hardly think about him anymore. I really don’t think about losing any of them anymore. Not Mike. Not Steve. Not my Mom.
They are gone and it would only harm me to keep them in my thoughts every day.
I moved them to my heart.
We all grieve. Grieving is natural and necessary. It’s the mind trying to deal with the loss.
But in order to go on with our lives, that loss can’t occupy our minds forever.
My time with them ended and now they are in my heart.
From time to time, places, things, words, movies, music, a host of things can resurrect them. My heart lends them back to my mind for a short period of time and I remember.
But the memory is fleeting and that’s okay.
The spirit and the essence of who they were, what they meant to me is still alive in the heart.
Nothing else about them matters. And that can be difficult to embrace.
I can’t allow their memories to interfere with my life now.
I have a beautiful family. I have a beautiful wife, beautiful children and beautiful grandchildren. I’m blessed. They don’t need to be burden with my losses any more than I need to be haunted by the ghosts of what has been.
I think when Yahshua told us in Matthew 6:34 that we should take no thought for tomorrow, he was also talking about the past. The problems of today are sufficient. We must learn to be in the present. We must be content living day to day and stop thinking forward and backwards. Stay in the present.
In my heart, death and memory cannot harm me or burden me. In fact, they make me more powerful. And the more memories I store in my heart – rather than my mind – the more powerful I can become.
Death where is thy sting?
I did not lose anyone. They are still with me. I am never alone. The very essence of who they were, not what they were, lives inside of me. It grows inside of me and makes me a better husband, a better father and a better grandfather.
The living matter more to me than the dead.
That is how I look at death now.
With my heart, not my mind. Selah
Today would have been my mother’s 84th birthday. RIP Mom.
Allen M Werner is the author of the epic dark fantasy series
THE CRYSTAL CRUX
Author Allen M Werner 
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