Sunday 25 May 2014

To have loved and to have lost



"It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson                   




       People... they come in all shapes and sizes. They come in all variations. There are some 
who'll bring exquisite joy to your life, and others who'll offer nothing but anguish. There are good and bad people. Funny and grim people. One undisputed fact surrounding humanity, however, is that we're all doomed to come and go. God gives us precious moments with certain people. Moments to cherish, to etch into one's heart permanently.



Some people are capable of even changing one's attitude, their perception and outlook on life. Sometimes I wish people didn't have to just come and go, like stepping onto a movie screen to offer a brief escapade of beauty, only to gracefully fade from the screen, to dissolve into an ocean of blackness. I hate goodbyes. I hate losing people... whether through death or through the varying obstacles that life throws one's way. It's hard. Letting beautiful moments and persons disappear from one's life... it's somewhat like being forced as a child to, after several months of caring for and loving a precious sparrow after having rescued it and mending it's tattered wing, let it go... to watch it fade off into the tangerine horizon. 





It's like having had a presence that radiated so much beauty into one's life, one who'd in fact taken a paintbrush to my once grim and colorless world and added a rainbow of beauty to my entire world and then watching as the color became drained, my world back to it's original state. But then, whoever said that one must be rid of all of the beauty that that person had at one time penetrated into my life? Although my moments with that person may now be over... I can still say that we had at one time been granted those priceless moments with one that person and that that person had in fact transformed my life for good. After all, there's no escaping the mark they may have left in my life. I suppose you could say, they left it beautiful for my next step in life. But then, it's also very hard to admit that the person that we now hate so much for leaving may have had such an impact on our lives. We get sad. Try and rid ourselves of anything that may remind us of that person. And what for? Their memory can still in fact live on inside of us. The memory of who they WERE, the beautiful person that we had at one time been granted the opportunity of knowing, whether or not they may have dispersed and faded into the next life, or been changed, tainted by some of life's bitter poisons, their beauty stolen from us. We can still look back to the times we had with that person. The good times, that is. We can still think back to those moments God allowed us to have in one another's presence... elated at just the sight of one another and nothing more. We all need to learn that it's Ok if times have changed and that person has beens stolen from our lives, that it's in fact Ok to cling onto their memory, to gleam at the thought of their beauty, the life of the person that we had at one time fallen in love with. 






 "He was 25 years my senior and eternally young. I could hardly keep up with him. He was the most energetic man I've ever known and he made our short 18 months together one of the most intensely glorious times of my life. ... I have had two great loves in my life. Mike Todd was the first."




Elizabeth, broken-hearted and devastated, pictured above attending her late husband, Mike Todd's funeral, after his tragic death in a plane crash.


"When love is lost, do not bow your head in sadness; instead keep your head up high and gaze into heaven for that is where your broken heart has been sent to heal."~Unkown




Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, pictured above, sharing a tender moment together days preceding their marriage (1956) 




Prince Rainier above (with daughter, Princess Stephanie) and below, rolling Grace's casket, decades later, as he bids farewell to his beloved bride after her tragic car crash (1982)



"Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it."Mitch Albom





"Though lovers be lost love shall not."Dylan Thomas





Joe and Marilyn pictured above on their wedding day in 1954.



Joe pictured above, attending Marilyn's funeral nearly a decade later. (1962)

People breezed in and out, some pushed away others jumping – but from their first meeting in 1952 Joe was steadfast. Many different sources claim that Joe and Marilyn had planned to remarry – that the wedding date was set for 8th August 1962 – the day that became Marilyn’s funeral date. How honest and reliable these sources were we are unlikely to know now, but some things we do know for sure, some things are documented, some things can be visually seen. For example during 1961 and up to Marilyn’s death – Joe had begun to take a higher profile in her life. Often taking up the position of surrogate husband – he was the only person there for her when she was placed into a mental institution by her then psychiatrist Dr Marianne Kris – her pleas for help to the Strasberg’s fell on deaf ears – for whatever reasons they might have had – but Joe heard her and he claimed her – interestingly enough as his ‘wife’. Joe did as she asked and removed her from the place that distressed her.  ~ Loving Marilyn  http://www.lovingmarilyn.com/dimaggio.html


“We were sitting together in the patio one night, talking about his illness, and he said, ‘I don’t feel bad about dying. At least, I’ll be with Marilyn again.’”

Joe Dimaggio died with Marilyn Monroe's name on his lips.

Despite their premature separation, his love and devotion for her followed him to his grave.



In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.Mignon McLaughlin





John F. Kennedy and Jackie Onassis pictured above on wedding day (1953) and less then a decade later below.





"Now, I think that I should have known that he was magic all along. I did know it - but I should have guessed that it would be too much to ask to grow old with and see our children grow up together. So now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man."


   Jackie O attending the funeral of her late husband, John F. Kennedy (1963)


"Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart" ~Washington Irving

       “When my marriage broke up, it was terrible,” ~ Audrey Hepburn on divorce with Mel Ferrer 





“More than that, it was a keen disappointment. I thought a marriage between two good, loving people had to last until one of them died. I can’t tell you how dis­illusioned I was. I’d tried and tried. I knew how difficult it had to be to be married to a world celebrity, recognised everywhere, second billed on the screen and in real life. How Mel suffered. But believe me, I put my career second.” 



"I was enchanted by meeting him, very interested to meet him. I’d loved his performance in Lili. The thing I remember most about that first meeting was that I thought he was so serious. He didn’t smile. I liked him… but that was all. He’d seen me in Gigi and we talked about doing a play together, the way actors and actresses do. And we said that if either of us found a play that would suit us, we’d send it to the other."~ Audrey Hepburn


“People would ask in years to come: ‘What on earth did Audrey see in Mel?’” wrote her biographer, the late film critic Alexander Walker.
Kinder to Ferrer than posterity threatened to be, he insisted that the answer was not so hard to find. “They had a great deal in common. Like Audrey, Mel Ferrer had begun his stage career as a dancer.
Like Audrey, he had suffered a serious physical drawback: he contracted polio, spent three years in what he called a “sort of non-alcoholic Lost Weekend” and was left with a semi-paralysed arm which he nursed back to flexibility by punishing exercises. Audrey always admired people with the strength of will to overcome their troubles. She had suffered respiratory problems and severe malnutrition as a child.

"What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose."
Henry Ward Beecher



Lauren Bacall and late husband Humphrey Bogart pictured above.

"Losing Bogey was horrible, obviously. Because he was young. And because he gave me my life. I wouldn't have had a — I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met him — I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me, he gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man." ~ Lauren Bacall on Humphrey's passing, quoted in 2005.





You will never know true happiness until you have truly loved, and you will never understand what pain really is until you have lost it.Anonymous




"I know that’s what people say– you’ll get over it. I’d say it, too. But I know it’s not true. Oh, you’ll be happy again, never fear. But you won’t forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him."Betty Smith





Lauren Bacall pictured above while attending the funeral of her late husband, Humphrey Bogart (1957). 


“This is not a goodbye, my darling, this is a thank you. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me and receiving my love in return. Thank you for the memories I will cherish forever. But most of all, thank you for showing me that there will come a time when I can eventually let you go.
I love you, T.” 




Despite, how common it may be, however... it certainly doesn't help cushion the pain. In most other instances, however, it helps to hear that someone else is going through or have gone through the same painful experience as you... not when it comes to love though. It hurts far too much, it's a pain that can't be padded, it's blow can't be softened. And I suppose the only thing that can aid such an excruciating experience is nothing more than time. "Time will heal"... we all hear it and hate to hear it, for that matter. For, in the back of our minds, we feel that the only thing that could heal such a scorching loss would be the return of that person into our lives. To hold them in our arms again, to hear their voices... to see their faces. However, in most instances, that isn't going to happen, and as painful as it may be to realize, the only cure remaining is nothing more than "time"... it's the only solution left. 



So, despite the pain, the fact that the suffering will become extinguished at times, there's no forgetting or letting go of those little whispers of beauty that those who've dispersed from our lives had at one time penetrated. And as much he may have hurt me... I still miss him. I miss him so much.


And I've excepted the fact that, although things have passed between us... I'll never forget you. I'll never forget the beauty you once brought into my life. You guided me to a whole new world, a world filled with ecstasy... I'll never forget that. 


and I hope he never does either.


He was charismatic, magnetic, electric and everybody knew it. When he walked in every woman’s head turned, everyone stood up to talk to him. He was like this hybrid, this mix of a man who couldn’t contain himself. I always got the sense that he became torn between being a good person and missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer a man as magnificent as him. And in that way, I understood him and I loved him.
I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.
And I still love him. I love him.
~ Lana Del Rey in "National Anthem"











"Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow- beautiful while it’s there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink."~ Jodi Picoult

Love, Erin <3 xoxoxo

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