Living With a Broken Heart: Introduction (Part 1)
“A Broken Heart”. All my life I’ve heard those words used to describe the emotional fall-out that is experienced as a result of all kinds of situations that life throws in a person’s way.
A junior high boy is broken-hearted when his girlfriend dumps him. How in the world can he go on living after such a devastating loss? Will he ever be able to find true love again? Those questions seem almost comical when viewed from an adult’s perspective. But to that junior high boy, the pain and heartache and uncertainty of life are no laughing matter.
A little girl’s heart breaks when she learns that her precious kitty has run away from home. Or even worse, “Poopsie” has gotten into a fight with a moving car … and the car won. That little girl can’t even fathom the idea of Poopsie being nothing more than a flattened mess of fur and blood and guts in the middle of Main Street. And she certainly cannot bear the pain of never again being able to hold her precious kitty and stroke its soft coat and listen to its gentle purr. How can she go on living with such bitter sorrow in her heart?
A young family is uprooted when the husband and father is relocated by his employer. Life-long friends are left behind, perhaps never to be seen again. Familiar, comfortable surroundings are traded for unfamiliar ones. The old house, with its homespun warmth and its years of irreplaceable memories, must be abandoned and turned over to complete strangers who cannot possibly appreciate it or enjoy it or even love it like “we” do. The overshadowing sense of emptiness and frustration that weighs down on each member of the family can very easily be characterized as broken-hearted.
A young man’s world falls apart when his father dies suddenly and unexpectedly from a rare and fast-growing form of cancer. His hero has fallen. His mentor is gone. The man to whom he was supposed to be able to turn for the answers to life’s many challenges is no longer available for that much-needed counsel and advice. Suddenly the abstract concept of a broken heart becomes painfully palpable.
A young couple’s lives are turned upside-down when their pre-teen daughter is diagnosed with a brain tumor. She fights bravely for her life, and in time it looks as though she has beaten the cancer monster. The harsh treatments, which were almost worse than the disease itself, seem to have worked. There appears to be a faint, glimmering light at the end of the long, hellish tunnel through which they have been traveling. Then, just as their lives are beginning to return to normal, without warning the monster reappears … this time much stronger and more determined than before. Within a couple of months their beautiful, bright, precious daughter — now barely a teenager — is stolen from them by death as they stand by and watch helplessly. Never before have their hearts felt this broken, this unmendable. How can such indescribable pain possibly be endured, or even survived?
Life is not fair. Mom warned every one of us about that harsh reality when we were just kids. In the words of the Shirelles, “Mama said there’d be days like this.” Boy, was Mama right! Life has a way of knocking you down, throwing you a sucker punch, yanking the rug right out from under your feet. Sometimes you fall so hard that it seems impossible to ever get back up. Often these knock-downs produce an emptiness and a sense of pain that reach to the very core of your being — an emotional state that we routinely describe as being broken-hearted.
Every one of us will experience these difficult times as we journey through life — times when the heart feels like it is broken literally in two. This brokenness seems to be most intense, and the accompanying emptiness most deep, when someone we love dies.
The question posed musically by the Bee Gees deserves our thoughtful consideration: “How can you mend a broken heart?” CAN you mend a broken heart? That’s what we will be considering in this book. Particularly, we will explore the concept of grief, and how to survive this gut-wrenching, life-altering experience.
There is one thing that qualifies me to write a book on the subject of grief. I have “been there, done that”. I am not a “grief expert” in any scholarly sense of that title. I have done no clinical research, and I have no credentials in grief counseling. I’m just a regular guy who has experienced unspeakable grief, and who has survived. So I know that it can be done. I know that YOU can make it through even the toughest times in life. The purpose of this book is simply to share with you my thoughts and my experiences on Living With a Broken Heart, and to give you an encouraging pat on the shoulder as you struggle daily to find your own way through life with your own broken heart.
In the first two chapters I will tell you my story. Actually, I will tell you the stories of two people who were (and are) very dear to me, both of whom were taken from me by death before their time. My Dad, Larry O’Rear, died of cancer at age 58. My precious daughter, Ashley O’Rear, died of recurring brain tumors at age 14. My heart was broken on both occasions, and I am convinced will remain broken for the rest of my life.
May 8th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Thanks, Paul for sharing with us. When a person wants to really know about something, it needs to come from someone who has first-hand experience. I look forward to reading your blog and sharing its contents with my sister who lost a son a few years ago. She is struggling with that loss and many others.