A prayer for love to live on for as long as possible….

 

I just felt a compulsion to write…and to write about a topic that is kind of funny. In our news magazine, we are running an edition about the plight of widows in Nigeria. The edition has just gone to press, and unfortunately, we are currently ‘redesigning’ our website so you won’t find the copy online. However, if you send me an email address (send it to folarirn.banigbe@gmail.com), I will send you an e-copy of that magazine.

As I was making the final corrections to that edition, I started to think about love, and the people that never actually find it all of their life. Some are married, living a good life, and on the surface and even from all intents and purposes they are happy, but they are not in love, never been in love, and do not know what it means to really love someone. That is a real shame, because if you have ever been in love, it breaks up your heart to imagine yourself without the person you are in love with. I am not talking about what we call love generally, I am talking about those who have once in their lives found true love (use your own definition of true love, it doesn’t matter), whether or not they are still in a relationship with the person they love.

I am probably not making sense…but when I thought about the women who lost their husbands early in life, I just feel so terribly sad for them. Assuming they were really in love with person, then it is not just a husband they have lost, it is also a lover. I can imagine that it is a hard thing to lose both a husband and a lover at the same time.

Love is a strange thing… love between a man and a woman is an enigma. One never truly understands the thing. It is an inexplicable feeling. When we lose love to death therefore, it wrenches the heart apart. The love is not just gone, it is so so gone it cannot be continued.. and there is no hope of it coming back. The bereaved is left feeling so disoriented and scattered! I don’t have the experience of what I write today, but I have seen people who lost their lovers; associated with some; and witnessed situations where I cannot help but wonder how they go from day to day after the death of their lover.

I guess the good memories will come to their aid at these times and perhaps for ever. Even if those memories bring them to tears many times, I am sure that they are still thankful that they have  recollections of those magical moments when love was alive.

They say love is a beautiful thing, thus the loss of it must be a really painful thing. Life is so fickle and our existence is so not in our hands. We have no control, we have no say. I am urging everyone who has found love to worship love next to them worshipping the Creator. They should give themselves so completely into it, and live every day for it. It’s important to do this, because though tomorrow may be so close but it is also so unknown.

I pray that love lives long for those who have found it. It is painful to keep living for a long time with the recollection of a lost love early. I am afraid to think of the possibilities of losing love. When I think about it, I stop to pray, and I beg God to keep my love living… The truth of the matter is that thinking of it scares me… I am not sure what I can bear and what I cannot bear, so I pray to God, don’t let me find out if I can bear to lose my loved one now. I am sure you will pray that prayer too.