Heart Hurt

When I was younger, my mom used to say that her heart hurt when different things would happen in her life or between my sister and I. I never really understood what she meant. To me, heart hurt must be something you feel with your actual heart. Either the muscles aren't pumping the right way or the blood isn't flowing exactly the right way. I couldn't grasp the fact that when she said her heart hurt she meant her emotional heart. The heart she had given to my dad, my grandmother, my sister and me so many years before.

Now that I'm older, I have an all too realistic understanding of what she meant all those years ago. In the past two and a half weeks, I have watched my sister crumble, triumph and crumble again. During her time of mourning, she has said more than once that she is not in physical pain, but that her heart hurts.

I also have a friend who was forced to deliver her baby 5 weeks early. While 5 weeks early is certainly better than 10 weeks early, he's still having his fair share of complications from being early. When I went to check on her at the hospital, she told me that she was not in any physical pain but that her heart hurt because her baby boy was having to spend time in the NICU recovering from being 5 weeks early.

I don't think heart hurt is a mom/girl thing. I think dads and guys have heart hurt just as much as girls do. I think that it takes a great maturity to understand where someone is hurting when they tell you they have heart hurt. I also think it is a difficult thing to overcome.

My only comfort in realizing what heart hurt is and watching my friends experience heart hurt is knowing that my sister, my friend, and I are blessed with amazing families. Families who are standing by us through both of our ordeals and reaching out asking how they can help. Not to mention the countless number of friends who have been by our sides while this is going on.

I certainly don't wish heart hurt on anyone, but I have a much greater understanding of what it is and what it means to feel it.

Family life is full of major and minor crises -- the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce -- and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul.
-- Thomas Moore