Lesson Learned, Cara: Love, Hope and Loss

Here's our first contest entry, written by Cara Stone. Don't forget the deadline is August 7th - keep sending us your essays!

"The kind of hugs you give during times of grief are those when you can’t tell which person is the one holding the other up. They are the kind where you are holding so tightly that one could go limp with sorrow and neither would fall. They are the kind where you are trying to convey that, somehow, the world will go on and that you can rely on your friends to be there and understand that your heart is broken and they won’t try to fix it but, rather, just be there with you as you relearn how to navigate the world.”

I wrote those words three days after he died. Let me back up. Over the July 4th weekend a close friend of mine from college got married. Less than twelve hours later one of her closest friends, an usher at her wedding, died unexpectedly at the age of thirty. He left behind a wife, a three-month-old daughter, a father, and friends who loved him like a brother.

I got the call at 1:57 a.m. from the bride, Beth, saying something had happened to Jeremy; she didn’t know the extent of it all but she wanted to let someone else in the wedding party know where she was and what little she knew, and that she’d call back when she knew more. The next call came at 2:09 a.m. Beth managed to get out three words before she couldn’t speak anymore. Before her voice became overwhelmed with grief for the friend she considered a brother. “Jeremy didn’t make it...” she said. The “it” trailed away into sobs. She managed to find a few more words, getting them out through the cries and gasps for air; the message was something along the lines that she didn’t know what to do and she needed someone who could think straight to come to the hospital right away.

I have never been in this kind of situation, so close to the actual moment of death. My heart ached, and continues to ache, for Jeremy’s wife, for Beth and her partner on their wedding night...I couldn’t imagine what they were going through...what they continue to go through.

And yet, I had a different perspective. Though I was greatly saddened by the loss of Jeremy, more of the grief and sadness I felt was that for those who have lost their shared future with Jeremy. I’m not married, but I can’t imagine losing my (someday) husband and never again seeing his smile, the one I would expect to see on the pillow next to me every morning for the rest of my life...to lose the plans we might make to go visit friends next week...to lose the conversations about how to raise our children... to lose the times when the pile of dishes in the sink would be too much and I might wash and he might dry...to lose the idea of growing old together...to lose the shared laughter...to lose the times when we might just sit and be, together...

That night I told myself I never wanted to fall in love so I would never have to face the kind of pain Jeremy’s wife was feeling, the despair and grief. Even now I keep going back and forth...But I have faith that there is so much more to love than just the now. That, somehow, the memory of the love that was shared along with the love and support of friends and family would help me continue, to face each day as it comes. Nothing would be “better;” nothing would be “alright.” It would be a different life than I or anyone else could have envisioned...one that I might not want to face. But it would still have love. As long as there is at least a little bit of love I could still have hope. Though it scares me, I won’t (and can’t) give up on love.

Rock Bottom

"Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity."
--Vaclav Havel

View from the Bottom of a Well, courtesy of clickykbd on flickr

Sometimes getting to rock bottom is what enables you to finally take a step that you've been needing to take for a long time. It takes a lot less courage to make a big change when you having nothing left to lose, and sometimes maybe that's life's way of helping us out. When you're at the bottom, there's nowhere to go but up.

Gives Me Hope

I feel like I've been posting a lot about websites lately, but I discovered one today that makes me really happy. It's called Gives Me Hope; people write in with Twitter-length entries about experiences that gave them hope, and some of them are incredibly sweet and inspiring. Since we've been talking about hope, I thought I'd share; these were a few of my favorites from what I saw today.


One day when I was younger I walked to the nearest 7-11, and saw a homeless man standing with a puppy.
A couple friends told me to not give him money cause he'd waste it on drugs/alcohol. But I gave him two dollars.
He walked into the store and came out with a can of dog food to feed his puppy. He even gave me back change; 2 quarters. 
That man GMH.

Comment on #68086 (0) Jun 11, 2010 12:00 AM by Lanna, Aurora,CO - Inspiring feats

One day I passed a woman walking two dogs.
One was missing a leg, but they were both limping. I asked what happened. 
She explained that the injured dog had lost his leg, and that the other dog was copying him so he wouldn't feel alone. 
Caring pets GMH
Comments on #67987 (0)Jun 10, 2010 09:00 PM by Mimblewimble, Frederick, MD - Random acts of kindness


For three years, I gave a dollar to this one homeless man everyday on my way home from work.

I hadn't seen him at his usual place in the past month.
Today, I called for a cab to take me to the airport. And that homeless man was now my taxi driver.

Comments on #67718 (1)

Jun 8, 2010 11:00 PM by San Jose, CA - Inspiring feats

When I was a freshman in high school we had a Spring Concert.

I got my period during the concert and it stained my light blue dress. 
The senior girls huddled around me on the way out for intermission, and rinsed and blow-dried my dress in the girls' room. 
Their compassion for a little geeky freshman GMH.

Comments on #62913 (4)

May 28, 2010 12:00 AM by Somerville, NJ - Amazing friends

When my brother was in kindergarden, he couldn't stop talking about how cool and funny his best friend Jeremy is.
When we met him, we saw he was in a wheelchair. On the way home we asked my brother why he never told us that Jeremy was in a wheelchair. 
He simply said, "Because it isn't important." 
My brother's acceptance GMH.
Comments on #61990 (3)May 26, 2010 02:00 PM by Hanna L, Toledo, OH - Inspiring feats

Ladies (and gentlemen)--almost every one of these made me cry. There are some really amazing stories on that site. 


What gives you hope? I'll tell you mine--websites like Gives Me Hope, and like this Facebook group based on a PostSecret. People caring for each other gives me hope. 

The Thing With Feathers

I like the idea of hope. As I think about all the different definitions I've heard of this word, all the conflicting ideas about it, I feel like sometimes we miss the point of it.

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

--Vaclav Havel, last President of Czechoslovakia and first President of the Czech Republic; poet, playwright, dissident, and human rights champion.

I think this is the best definition I've ever seen, aside from one thing: To me, hope and optimism are the same thing.

I think the problem with people's idea of optimism is perspective. Being an optimist doesn't necessarily mean that you believe everything will go the way you want it to right now; like Havel says, I think it means you believe, you have hope, that in the long run, everything will be right. If this means you suffer short-term failures, that's okay--you can't always see the path beyond where you are now, so if something doesn't go the way you wanted it to, it's just because your information wasn't complete.


Hope means accepting what comes, and learning that no matter what, you never know everything. It requires a faith in something bigger than you: A conviction that even if you can't see it now, things will make sense in the end.

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." - G.K. Chesterton