Unending Love

Yesterday, I took Chip’s wedding ring to the jeweler in our town to have the ring guard tightened. The ring was his “camp ring” from Teton Valley Ranch Camp, the camp he attended and worked at as a teenager. I had his camp ring and the wedding band he bought me engraved with the following: Past. Present. Eternity. December 29, 2018. He had the ring guard put on the ring since he had lost so much weight in the last 6 or so months of his life and it kept slipping off. I wear the ring now in place of my band in remembrance of him, so the guard needed to be tightened up.

As many of you know, I am a believer in past lives. I didn’t come to believe this from my Christian faith. No one explicitly taught me about the possibility of past lives growing up. It wasn’t something that was discussed amongst my high school or college friends when we sat around altering our minds or speaking philosophically in the wee hours of the morning. The concept of past lives came to me one day, while walking on the Upper East side of New York City (was it the late-80’s? the early 90’s?…I can’t recall). From there and over the years for various reasons, my belief deepened.

I am turning to one of my favorite poems, “Unending Love” by Rabindranath Tagore, frequently these days when I think about how Chip and I shared multiple lives together. It brings comfort to know that we loved each other before, lived and loved in the present, and will love each other throughout eternity. The words of the poem reflect our belief that death would not separate Chip and me, and this belief was the reason behind us saying “See you on the other side” each time we separated before a procedure or intervention of his that could potentially end his life.

To watch the lines of the poem fade in and out next to a vibrantly colored flower while Mendelssohn’s “On Wings of Song” plays in the background in a (roughly) two-and-a-half minute video, click here.

Here is the poem from the website allpoetry.com: Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever. Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain, Its ancient tale of being apart or together. As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge, Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time: You become an image of what is remembered forever. You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount. At the heart of time, love of one for another. We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell- Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever. Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you The love of all man’s days both past and forever: Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours – And the songs of every poet past and forever.