Though Lovers Be Lost, ...

There is no love like the love of a mother for her child, and the child assumes that love, and abides in it, and lives in its shelter and warmth.

The child leaves the mother first, to go forth in this world.  The mother holds her tears, but lets the child go.  For that is in the nature of things.  She wishes happiness and fulfillment for the child more than the child wishes for itself.

And one day, the mother, old and frail, bids her final goodbye to this world.  And only then it dawns on the child what a fragrant presence the mother was in its own heart.  When it is no more possible for the child to reach out to its mother outwardly, then the child reaches in, within, and finds the love whose intensity was so far hidden to it.

And that explosion of love and grief creates an intensity about an absence that the presence perhaps never could.  The world of the child is now absent the mother, but strangely its heart is full once again with her presence.

From being inside the mother before its birth, the child now nurtures the mother inside itself.

Though lovers be lost,
Love shall not.

And Death shall have no dominion.