Love Isn't All We Need

John Lennon got it half right

I drove near her office today.

Past the red wooden lounge chairs—the ones overlooking Main Street—where we sat for hours after our first meal together.

I remembered how stunning she looked, her blond strands rising and falling as they caught in the breeze. How effortlessly she brushed them away from her face and tucked them behind her ears. How she pushed her knees against her chest to buffer against the cool, late-spring evening air.

I was intoxicated by how openly she shared details about her troubled past, including her rocky marriage. I was newly single after my own 30-year relationship ended and didn’t yet have the perspective to reflect with her same wisdom.

So, I listened. And continued watching her deftly challenge the wind.

Just a few months later, soon after falling in love with her, I’d realize that while I might’ve been listening during that star-filled evening, I wasn’t hearing what she was saying. I was still a rookie in the complex game of middle-aged dating and hadn’t picked up on some important details sprinkled amidst her words.

Especially the ones about her “complicated” living situation, and how she ran from previous relationships when first encountering challenges. So, I persevered, despite not really looking for a new relationship in the first place.

Later, I naively thought we aligned so well that we could face my job loss and career upheaval together, head-on.

Then, on my birthday, one year ago today, she invited me to her office, sat me down on her couch, and showered me with intensely thoughtful gifts. I’d never felt so special, seen, and loved in my entire life. Afterward, she snuggled up next to me and laid her head in my lap, while I stroked her thick, luscious hair and we excitedly talked about the Green Day concert at Coors Field in a couple of days.

After 20 minutes or so, her next appointment drew near, so we stood up, hugged tightly, and kissed intensely. As I walked out of her office, she whispered, “I love you” with a smile, both of which I returned as I closed the door behind me.

Something immediately shifted that evening, though.

She began waiting long periods before responding to my texts, and the few replies I received were terse and ambivalent. As my panic increased over the next 48 hours, I reached out to her with greater frequency, hoping to feel a glimmer of the spark we’d shared. But something had been extinguished.

I didn’t see her again until I picked her up for the concert, and while we might’ve only sat a couple of feet apart in the car ride there, the distance between us couldn’t have been greater.

At the stadium, each band’s set further revealed her love of live music—one we intimately shared—which was as intoxicating as her wise words and openness that first evening. But when I touched her, I felt the same flatness as her texts.

While we had a decent conversation on the way home from the venue, it was clear (perhaps only in retrospect) that something wasn’t being said. When I pulled in front of her house and put the car in park, she laid her head in my lap like she did in her office. “This is great! Whatever tension between us was about to dissolve,” I thought.

Instead, she said, “I just don’t know if we should keep doing this.”

I won’t bore you with details about what occurred immediately after those words left her lips, or over the course of the next several days when she repeated that damning phrase at the dog park, but suffice to say that I was beyond devastated. I’d experienced so much turmoil over the previous nine months that I became suicidal and checked myself into a behavioral center for a much-needed respite from suffering.

Under a Fluorescent Sky: A Story About Loss, Light, & Lunacy

Now, one year later to the day, I find myself driving past those red chairs for the first time since our story ended. And while I’ve moved on to exciting, compassionate, and love-filled relationships since, I recognize that I still harbor a lot of grief about how everything unraveled so quickly.

But I also recognize that’s ok.

Because sitting mindfully with all that suffering—facing it head-on and learning what it needed to teach me—has also provided me with one of my life’s greatest understandings: grief isn’t something we ever really move past. Clinging to that expectation only leads to greater suffering.

Instead, grief is something we learn to walk alongside, while giving it the necessary space to consciously inform the chapters that follow.

John Lennon famously sang that all we need is love.

While there is fundamental truth to these words, I believe we also need mindful awareness to help sustain us when love exits center stage and grief takes its place. We must learn to rest in gratitude amidst unsaid words and unanswered questions, thankful for what was instead of clinging to what is no longer.

So, wherever you are today, my windswept teacher: thank you for this year of lessons.

May you have also found love, alignment, and light-filled lessons in your journey.