Treasure

How does death change your perspective?

Have you ever been told death is a thief? I have. I used to wonder what does that mean? What exactly did it steal? I mean I understood what death was. It was never seeing someone again. I think I was seven or eight when my grandfather passed away. It simply meant that I would never see him again. I didn’t understand the value of the treasure that I had lost. Maybe it is time that is the thief, and death is the result. Yet time can only do what it does, it ticks away, and as it does, life ticks away with it. It was only when I lost my husband that I realized what the thief was taking, be it time or death. It steals our greatest treasure, our love. Knowing we are loved in this hard, cold world is the most valuable treasure we could ever hold. And time ticks as death slowly steals that from us.

Perspective changes in loss, but how did mine change? It forced me to stop being who I thought others wanted me to be, so that the real me could step out and come alive. Yes, death taught me to live. I thought I had it all. A warm safe home, someone who loved me dearly and a good job. Yet deep down I was not happy. I didn’t know how to go for the things I wanted out of life. How to push down fear and just go for my dreams. Death taught me how to do that. I have now traveled to places I had only dreamed of. I have written two books and I have learned that fulling those dreams has enriched me even more. I now know my value, and I have become the woman I want to be.

I know death has completely turned around who I am. It was like the realization that I was truly only half living and I had to stop dreaming of a full life and create one. I let others in the driver’s seat of my life and while it took a while, death taught me that as long as I let others control me and tell me what my value was I would never understand and know my own value. I am who I am and I am proud of who that is. Death taught me to live. Because I let fear rule my life, when I faced death, I learned that I was brave and bold and stronger than I ever thought possible.

It’s been almost four years since I faced death, and I have faced it and know that I can still live. I think of a verse in the Bible that talks about storing up your treasures in heaven so that they cannot be solen. As a kid I thought that meant actual treasure. As if you could earn treasure down here on Earth by doing great deeds. As an adult I have learned that means your loved ones! Teach them about God, raise them to be servants of the one true God and they will be reunited with you in heaven. Love is the most valuable treasure one can ever find. And yes losing that love when someone passes, is like losing the most valuable treasure in the world. Yet knowing that my love is in heaven and learning that I can have more than one love in this life only means that I will have all the more treasure in heaven.

Yes, when we lose those, we love we also lose our perspective as we feel the loss of their love. We start out in one place emotionally and end up in an very different place. Sometimes it takes a while to get there because we can only focus on what we have lost. We lose the ability to hear them say I love you, to feel their arms wrap around us and feel their warmth and the love they send out. But it is still there. It is there in memory. We found it though, in the way we laugh about our memories of him. I see it in my kid’s faces how they look, and sound like him. I may have lost his physical presence, but I have not lost him. I am just separated from him. I also do what he asked me to. I live. I find love, I find a way to be happy. I have done that by finding a way to be brave and do the things I love to do. It is as if I can feel him with me when I do the things that scare me the most. He is with me and he is also with the people that he loved very much. Those we have lost along the way. I have dreamed of him just a few times, since he passed, always he seems happy and is the young man that he was when I met him. It has been those few dreams that has brought me the most peace and the ability to do exactly what he and I at one time talked about, I am living.

So the new perspective after death, there are many. My life has completely changed because I have learned how to live, how to know where real value comes from. It comes from love for it is the only true treasure in this world, for when it is lost it is the one thing that truly brings on grief and the knowledge that something is just gone. Love the most valuable thing anyone can have or do.

Dee