Breaking a Heart

Have you ever experienced a broken heart? If you have, you can understand how I am feeling tonight. There are several reasons for my broken heart. Let's begin by listing them.

1. Watching your mother struggle to stay alive, while her body wants to give up...but her spirit doesn't. It is heart wrenching. She can no longer do the simplest things in life: reach with her arms, wiggle her toes, walk with her legs, stand on her feet, or tell you she loves you. She'll never again sit at my dinner table for Sunday Dinner. We'll never go shopping together again. We can't even watch a movie together. She lays in her bed, with her eyes looking far beyond me, and cries, and cries, and cries. I don't know if it is pain, depression or fear that makes her cry. I only know it is breaking my heart piece by piece, and I don't know how to help her...to help me. I know my mom, as I have known her for 54 years, is gone, and I have a different mother to care for and about. So it goes, broken heart number one.

2. I have a nine year old grandson who I love more than life itself. He is a sweet, caring young man. He is perfect in my eyes. But this last year at school, kids began calling him names because his ears stand out a little more than most people. Watching this sweet boy be hurt by names such as Dumbo is the second breaking of my heart. Because of the cruelness of others, he is having ear surgery early in the morning to correct his ears. All this because of the rudeness and stupidity of others. It not only breaks my heart; it brings out the mother bear in me. Let anyone come near this boy with any negativity, and someone will have to hold me back. This part of my heart will mend, but it will also ache for my boy who doesn't deserve to experience pain because of others who are thoughtless.

3.Now I suppose you are thinking, what possibly could be a third heart breaker for this woman of tears. Well, my heart breaks over the loss of a friend. A friend that mattered to me. A friend whose e-mails brightened my day, and gave me courage to move forward. The last e-mail from my friend, seemed a little off. Something is wrong, and I haven't heard anything for a week. Dear friend, my heart aches for you. I hope you are all right. Brighten my heart again. I need your friendship.

4.Could I possibly have another piece of my heart broken? Unfortunately yes. It is broken over what has been lost in my life. It is broken for the health problems that worry me day in and day out. For the friends and loves I have lost. My heart breaks over the loneliness I feel, even in a group of friends or family.

The question is, "How do you mend a broken heart?" This is hard to do when you are in the middle of this. It isn't like you can run over to Wal-mart and buy replacement parts. You can't eat or drink your way out of it, nor do you want to. There is no magic pill that will heal a broken heart. So where does one go, when things are falling apart, (and it isn't just the four things mentioned )

My own answer to this question is, "Go to the peaks, and look back at the valleys." When we do this we can look back at what we learned when things were going better ( at the peaks), and use our knowledge to climb out of the valley where things aren't so good. So for know, I am climbing out of my personal valley, attempting to reach a peak. I know I can do this, even with a broken heart. Because...even though my heart is broken...it is still my heart, and I still care about the happiness of my heart. So off I go to seek the answers to my questions, and if along the way you spot me, wave me on with words of love and encouragement.