AUGUST 13
...you will not be cured, but...one day—an idea that will
horrify you now—this intolerable misfortune will become a
blessed memory of a being who will never again leave you.
But you are in a stage of unhappiness where it is impossible
for you to have faith in these reassurances.
—MARCEL PROUSTIt is hard to believe, when we are in the midst of heavy grief,
that any good will come of this. We may resent any such
suggestion—as though someone is trying to offer a palliative
too soon, trying to proffer a “bright side” when the whole
world is darkened.
It is true that we will never be “cured”—never restored
to the being we were before. But we will not be forever
bereft. A larger world will present itself, a picture whose
frame has suddenly expanded, leapt out, to include more
than we had known. And in that expanded sense of our own
world will be the presence—and the absence—of the one
we love. A more shadowed world, perhaps, but a more lu-
minous world, too.
If I cannot believe it now, I can hold out the hope that in time my
lost love will be a continuing blessed presence in my life.