Love Is Not A Shield Against Death

The clock on the wall says it is the darkest hour, and your heart agrees. You are carrying a weight that feels like it could crush the floor beneath you: the belief that if you had loved them better, they would still be here.

But love is not a shield against death. It never was.

There was a man lying beside a pool for thirty-eight years, waiting for someone to help him into the water, and the light asked him a strange question: 'Do you want to get well?' The man did not say yes; he gave an excuse about having no one to help him. Yet the light did not scold him for his failure to reach the water sooner.

It simply said: 'Get up.' The command was not a judgment on his past inability; it was an invitation to a present reality. Your love was real.

Your effort was real. And the outcome was not a reflection of your failure, but a mystery that even the light entered into and wept over before it acted.

You did not fail to keep them alive; you loved them through the dying, and that love remains untouched by the grave.