A collaborative group of co-researchers, co-learners, co-grievers, and co-practitioners wrote this poetic essay during our February 24, 2026 Continuing Loving Bonds Story Sharing Circles.
When Death Comes Love Continues. How Does This Happen?
When Death comes the sunlight changes into far off starlight – light years away at first. In the quiet darkness, time slows down into a deep, deep, and even deeper pain. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. The stars are evidence of your love.
During the day we try to function, but we are like ghosts, us grievers. Lost in the emptiness of space. We try our best to walk through our days, doing all the right things. We reach out to friends, family, support groups, communities of people who understand.
Hard as this is to do, these ARE some of these right things. Hard as this is to do, reaching out will fill you up each day. It is barely enough. But it is almost enough to get you through to the emptiness of the night. The let down.
Sometimes though, in the night, underneath the far off star light the let down lifts up. Sometimes early on, sometimes after months and even years it happens for the first time. “My beloved came to me in a dream.” (Or a sign, or a mystical sense of the truth). The glances. The surprise of looking into each other’s eyes. The recognition. Then the waking up. Then the emptiness of the night. The let down.
“In the early days, if anyone had asked the fog that was my grief if love coninues, I would have answered ‘Yes, but it only flows one way. The ebb is gone along with the yang, the other half, the spark that used to light my flame. My love that now only flows one way is draining away.’”
That is why, in the early days, death wraps us in cotton wool to protect us.
To soften the let down of the every once in a while times when our beloved loved one comes through our protective one-way reactions. Each brief encounter is brief on purpose. Gently protecting. Gently preparing. “Some day I will write and read chapter after chapter, of our love story that continued no matter what.”
Over time we connect again and again. In between we draw on our memories, our spiritual practices, our studies, our guides, our true and real – no matter how fleeting – experiences. Over time our encounters become something more than dreams, more than signs, more than fleeting glances. More than an unexpected surprise that may never ever happen again. “Oh, you ARE still here.” “Yes, I’ve been here all along.”
Eventually we wake up KNOWING not only that our love continues. But that we can continue. If death is a game of hide and seek, life is a game of creation and re-creation. The game of death and the game of life have the same rules. Love is the first. Love is the last. Love is the beginning, middle and end. World without end. Amen.
My name is Linda Hill. When someone we love dies, the outcome of our deep love is deep grief. We can gradually transform our grief back into the love it has always been through a well researched set of tangible and spiritual practices called Continuing Bonds (that I call Continuing Loving Bonds)
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CONTINUING LOVING BONDS 