The Compassionate Friends Leesburg Chapter

 

 

We Know About Love
I believe that bereaved parents know more about true love than others. We know the love for our child when they were in the womb before we even met them. We know about loving them when they are helpless infants with nothing to give back. We know what it is like to love our toddlers through the terrible two’s (if we are blessed enough to have them that long). We know about loving our child through potty training, temper tantrums, sickness, stubbornness and learning difficulties. We know about loving them through the difficult teenage years. Some of us know what it is like loving our
children through rebellion, bad choices, rejection, through depression, mental illness, through alcohol and drug addiction and through physical illness and more. We have loved our children through it all, whether they have lived only in the womb or to adulthood. We know what it means to love our child so deep within our hearts that we ache with love because they are no longer
physically here. It is a love so deeply embedded within us and nobody but another bereaved parent could know the depth of this kind of love. Please dear bereaved parent, do not let this kind of love be quenched and wasted by keeping it only within. For our precious children’s sake, open your hearts
to love and give their love away to others and it will surely come back to you. On our son Brian’s grave marker we had this inscribed: “For love is as strong as death… Many waters cannot quench love, rivers cannot wash it away.” Song of Songs 8:6b,7a.

Much love to you all,
Beverly Elero
In loving memory of our sons Brian Patrick (12/30
– 10/29) and Brent Joseph (miscarriage 7/82)

 

What Does Love Look Like?
It has hands to help others;
It has feet to hasten to the poor and needy;
It has eyes to see misery and want;
It has ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men;
That is what love looks like.
St. Augustine

The Wounded Heart
Children have preceded their parents in death for eons of time. We are not first, nor will we be the last to enter the realm of “Bereaved Parents”. But for now…right now…it is OUR HEARTS that are freshly wounded and OUR HEARTS in need of mending. Wounded hearts must be allowed to mourn and lament their loss, to pour out their pain, agony, sadness, hurt and anger, and to release their well of tears. Wounded hearts need to be wrapped in quietness, gentleness and compassion, away from the turmoil of daily
life. A wounded heart not allowed to mend from the depth of its agony, will be an abscess…to swell and undermine…erupting at a distant time. Or, suppressed, it will slowly choke the spirit of its host. Only the bearer will know when his heart has healed. The wounded heart, encouraged and given the time and freedom to mend, will carry in its chambers the memory and shared love of a precious child.
Nancy Green, TCF Livonia, MI