“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.” – Roy Croft
David over at www.workingwithme.com, a myeloma blog/website is a relatively “new” fellow myeloma warrior acquaintance for me. He has a gift. A gift of finding lovely music with heartfelt lyrics. I’m sure David has many gifts, but this is the one that I was first drawn to.
Accepting my appreciation of such things, a shared appreciation, he sent me this yesterday, with just a simple thought, “…thought you might enjoy this.” Like someone who surprises you with a flower, you accept it and soak up all its pleasures and the thoughtfulness in “the gift”. So I ventured over to hear Rascal Flatts (a group I have very much enjoyed in the past) and watched and listened to this beautiful song, “I Won’t Let Go”.
I cried.
I cried because all I could think of was my Myeloma Warrior friends and how this song and its words resonated on both sides of this journey – the caregiver and the patient. How we could both be singing these words to each other. I thought about all the joy I’m feeling lately in my life, things going well, moving forward, being hopeful, juxtaposed against Susie and Dianne who have both endured losing their soul mates to myeloma months apart from each other. My friend Marsha who lost her husband unexpectedly to cancer in a whirlwind effort to save his life, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and in a blink it seemed he was gone. My friend Sarah and her mother Kathy, who lost Jim, father and husband, to prostrate cancer last fall and their struggle to go on without him and find some meaning in their lives. Jan and Bruce fighting to regain his remission.
There are more, but as I listened to this beautiful lyric sung by a great group of musicians it moved me, to tears, of both sorrow and joy. Deep sorrow for their loss, their struggle to go on and my empathy for them. Joy that they were all so incredibly fortunate to have had such profound people in their lives, to share it, to raise children with, to travel with, to talk to and lay next to for so many years. And while it makes the void and hole in their lives incredibly profound, I think of how fabulously lucky they are to have had so many years of incredible memories, joys, and laughter with someone such as those they lost.
Hamada, Vern, Michael, Jim. They made their mark on the world, in their small corner of it. A loss so great is a measure of the gifts they gave with their smile, their heart, their friendship, their touch.
David, thank you once again for sharing this with me.
