Loved ones don't have to ever really die

There are all kinds of anniversaries in life — the day we're born, the day we move away from home, the day we first fall in love, the day we get married, the day our first child is born.

There's also the day we die. Fortunately, we aren't around to remember that one so we don't feel a thing. But for those who loved us and are still alive, it's a different story.

Many years after a dear friend lost her only child, a daughter, she found herself feeling lonely and depressed toward the end of July. After one especially difficult day in which she felt physically ill, she finally realized, "Oh yes, now I remember. Today is Sarah's birthday."

When a person we have loved with all our heart dies, the only thing that goes into the ground is their body. Think about John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Martin Luther King, who are still vibrantly alive in the memories of those of us who lived through the turbulent '60s. Elvis Presley still has more fans than most celebrities have in a lifetime.

Thirty-seven years ago, an old labor and delivery room nurse placed my three-day-old son Terence in my arms and wished me well. "The essence of content," she sighed as she looked at the tiny infant sleeping peacefully in my arms.

For the next 23 years, there wasn't a day that wasn't colored by his deep blue eyes and coal-black hair. If there was mischief to be gotten into, Terence was usually near the front of the line. If there were hearts to be won with hard work, earnestness and a crooked smile, Terence was the one to win them. If there was a way to avoid reading a book, Terence mastered it better than any other homework.

For 23 years, that boy gave me the ride of a lifetime. Then one day, just as he was about to take off into the full glory of manhood, his car was struck by a tractor trailer on a highway somewhere outside of Hagerstown, Md. Gone in an instant.

That day was July 24, 1994, 14 years ago today. Like my friend Pam, I usually feel lonely, depressed and slightly ill through the month of July. Thankfully, most of us have friends in our lives who knew the one we've lost and don't mind talking about them. Some of them enjoy reminiscing almost as much as we do. They are God's gift to keep the springtime of our loved one's smile alive in our hearts.

In my life, the person most gifted at doing that was my husband, Eric. He first met Terence when he was still a little guy of 6 years old. It's a brave man who can take on three rambunctious kids that are not his own and still have enough gas left in his tank at the end of the day to love their mother.

When the very ground beneath you threatens to slip away, sometimes you must learn to stand on another person's strength. For me, Eric was that person. Through the lonely months and years of learning to live in a world without Terence, Eric's smile and quiet understanding were the window that helped me to see that life was still worth living.

On a warm July afternoon in 2004, 10 years after Terence died, Eric lay in the recovery room of Transylvania Hospital as his doctor took me aside and told me his one word diagnosis: cancer.

All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't fix Eric, but we did have a year. A summer, a fall, a winter, a spring and part of another summer to say all those things that needed to be said, do those last-minute things we'd always planned to do.

Most of us never truly realize how deeply another person's life is interwoven with our own until the thread of their life is missing. That precious, golden year taught me one critical lesson I will never forget. If I'd had a thousand days warning before Terence died, it wouldn't have been enough any more than 365 days warning were before Eric died. That's what eternity is all about, that's how long it takes to really love someone.

On July 24, 2005, 11 years after Terence died, Eric too left the world of the living.

The heart keeps its own calendar no matter how hard our minds may try to ignore a painful anniversary. Hard work, busyness, a spending spree, drinking until you pass out — there are many ways to get through a day you'd just as soon forget.

But there is another way that only a few people choose because it involves some pain. Embrace the day. Pull out that loved one's pictures, their letters, a home movie if you are blessed to have one.

Relax into the past and remember the good, the ordinary, and the bad. That's what you'd do if they were still here. Their lives would still be going on, not immortalized in a sainthood that probably isn't real.

Let yourself laugh at the mistakes they probably would have made and acknowledge the lessons they would have learned. Glory in the triumphs they would have achieved. You would have loved them anyway, just as you still do. Let them be all they could and would have been. Human to the end. Then, gently, quietly, let them go to the place where all good memories go, not to fade into oblivion, but to live in your mind and heart as a part of you.

When you do this, as long as you live, they never really die.

Susan Hanley Lane, a Times-News community columnist, lives in Naples. Her Web site is www.susanhanleylane.com.