Holding the Light with Terry

I have returned, again and again, to Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, over the years, and each reading has offered a new lens, a different way to see life. When I first read it, I was drawn to its lyrical beauty. Later, its wisdom felt like gentle guidance. Each reading a quiet whisper, a gentle nudge of understanding. This time, reading it while reflecting on my years with Terry, it became something more: a companion. A soft voice holding my heart through love, grief, and life’s impermanence.

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”
I hear it in the laughter we shared, always laced with fear; in hope that clung to us, even in heartbreak. Each stage of Terry’s illness brought its own revelation, its own lesson in patience, compassion, and the courage of acceptance.

“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.”
Nothing remains the same, no matter how much we wish it would. Terry’s life, our life together, changed in ways I could never have fully anticipated. Yet love is not measured by permanence, but by depth and presence. I saw it in the small gestures, the quiet care, the ordinary moments that were anything but ordinary. Even in the long, slow good-bye, love endured. Shifted, yes, but never absent.

“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?”
As I hold onto memories, hope, and the sense of his spirit, I imagine Terry now in that light. Letting go was never easy, but it was love taking a new form. A deeper presence beyond my reach, yet always within my heart.

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”
Everything shifts, everything moves, and yet the essence, the love, the memory, the quiet bond, remains, guiding us forward.

Life flows, always changing: beginnings, endings, joy, sorrow, love, loss. All interwoven. Nothing stays the same, and yet love persists. It lingers in memory, in care, in the quiet spaces between breaths.

The Prophet holds the fullness of life in its words.

It teaches me to honor each moment,
embrace impermanence,
and trust that love endures beyond the passage of time.