“They” say that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. What “They” don’t say is that it is more painful to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. While this pain is not explicitly stated in what “They” say, anyone who can affirm this saying knows that pain goes hand in hand with ‘loving and losing’. From this, we can understand that the deeper meaning of this phrase is that those who experience an opposition in regards to love, are better people for it. We can broaden this scope to include all things and should. For example, a baseball player would never improve his skills if there didn’t exist other baseball players to oppose him.

This concept is an eternal principal given to us by God in the scriptures. In Genesis chapters 2 and 3, God gave Adam and Eve a tree that contained the fruit of knowledge of Good and Evil and furthermore He gave them the commandment to not eat the fruit. Enter temptation… The serpent (Satan) tempted them to eat the fruit and to disobey God. They chose the opposition and were punished by God and cast out of the garden. However, had they not had opposition to God’s commandment to not eat the fruit, they would never have considered it and thus they would have remained in the garden for eternity in an endless state of innocence. That means that they wouldn’t have had children and those children wouldn’t have had children and so forth… and we would not exist today, relegating the Great Plan of Happiness that was engineered by God to a tall bookshelf in God’s study to gather dust. Now, God, being God, foresaw this and allowed there to be opposition so that we could learn and grow by making choices. In my opinion, Lehi says it much better than I just did when he gave counsel to his son Jacob, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility” (2nd Nephi 2:11).

Ok so the point of all of that is this… I have loved, deeply loved, and lost. Coming to terms with this has been extremely difficult and doesn’t seem to get any easier. It has been over 1 year and 3 months since Lorna died and I still wear the ring I bought her when we went to Moab and the pictures of her and me are still all over my room and there are mementos and reminders everywhere I go. I have put them there because the hardest and scariest feeling of all to overcome is the fear that I might forget her if I don’t remind myself everyday. I have never been able to understand why this feeling of fear grips me so hard because I know, in the logical part of my brain, that I will never forget her and yet I’m scared to death that I will. Well I have come to realize that part of that fear is because I am holding on so tight by keeping all of these reminders around me all of the time.

Tonight I made a decision to, while I am strong enough in this moment, take everything I can find and put it in a box that I can keep forever. I will always know what is in that box and I know that I will never forget her even though I have to let her go. Letting go and forgetting aren’t the same thing. As I was doing this tonight, I could barely stand it and I started to think about a lot of things. Mostly about what is written above. I started to think about the relationship that Lorna and I had shared. I thought about the capacity I have gained for love and joy but also the equal and opposite capacity I have gained for hurt and pain. To quote another scripture from the Book of Mormon, Alma the Younger is teaching his son, Helaman about the pain of sin and the repentance process he had gone through as young man. He says, “Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy”(Alma 36:21). It is my belief and feeling that God has designed us to only feel a measure of pain equal to the measure of joy we have the capacity to feel. These capacities come through our choices. With this measure I do not say that there is equality in duration, only equality in intensity. The length of time in which we feel joy or pain comes through our actions and choices.

Back to the phrase above that started all of this, it is my assertion that those who love and lose are better off because they have a greater capacity to feel love, joy and happiness, because of the pain they have suffered, than does a person who has never experienced the pain of losing someone they have loved. Whether that love has been a gradual fade out and the loss occurs because the love is gone or whether the person lost someone they have loved dearly in an unexpected way.

With all of this circling my brain and stirring up so many emotions and feelings, I decided to sit down with my mementos of Lorna and just write down all of my feelings. I did this in the hopes that all of the love and pain and anger and frustration and hate and happiness and good memories and bad memories would leave my heart and stay in the ink on the paper. I can only hope that this is the way to end the war inside me and give way to an environment in which my heart can finally begin to heal. I am so tired of fighting my anger and not being left with any energy to make new friends, to work, to study and excel in school, and so many other things.

This is what ended up on my paper…

I Remember

I remember you, the girl of my dreams,
You were smart, you were beautiful and you were so kind.
I didn’t know how or why way back then,
But when you entered that room, I Knew you’d be mine.

I remember that night, so cold and so clear,
Your eyes burning bright just like the stars in the sky.
It took so much nerve but I knew it was right,
I leaned in real slow and took you by suprise.

I remember you fell, your knees could not hold,
I grabbed you up in my arms and held you in tight.
I knew in that moment, standing there in the dark,
I would promise to hold you with all of my might.

I remember the feeling, so intense and so warm,
It filled all my body, my soul and my mind.
I had boarded the train and I wouldn’t look back,
At last I had found who I had come here to find.

I remember the ride, it was bumpy and rough,
But I had paid for the ticket and I had stood in the line.
No matter the twists and no matter the turns,
I would never have thought that you wouldn’t be mine.

I remember that morning, so cold and so clear,
I had sent you a message but you didn’t respond.
My mind feared the worst and it soon was confirmed,
Our train had derailed and now you were gone.

I remember you, the girl of my dreams,
You were smart, you were beautiful and you were so kind.
They say people like you aren’t meant for this world,
All that I know is you’re gone…
And now you’ll never be mine.