My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer when our daughter was six months old and she died three days before this daughter had her seventh birthday. All the while she was fighting to live, and still moving towards death, I kept telling her that if she gave herself the same love that she gave to her students and the singers in her choirs, she would definitely be able to heal herself. Her dedication to her work as a music teacher was of such caliber; she just gave all that could be given in any situation, she was wholly loving.

But she was never able to love herself like that. It was as if the love that I could observe while she was working was not really for herself. She may have felt that she was not worth it. And for a long time I was really angry at her as she in my eyes refused to help or love herself. Only when her health really deteriorated some six months before her death, did I fully accept her choice not to apply her love to herself and to die. We both accepted it and found the long sought peace in our relationship. And then she died.

It is now almost eight years since she died and just recently I realized that obviously she could not get the message from me as I have also been equally divided in my life. I have been able to be loving and wise while working with people to express the wisdom of Life Itself within us all. I have been able to do it while speaking freely and trusting that Life gets to be conveyed through me. And I have also been able to do it when writing as I have taken it as a holy moment of communication with something beyond my humanity. But I have been unable to apply that same love and wisdom in all the situations of my everyday life. I have not felt worthy of it as I have carried a deep sense of undefinable guilt within me.

So I had tried to coax my wife to apply the same love and wisdom in her life that I myself was unable to apply in my own. It was a humbling moment when I saw this, a moment when I definitely saw that nobody can ever live my life for me. I am the one living this life while everybody in my life is there to allow me to accept and free one more aspect of my hidden self, my hidden guilt and unworthiness. I am to love you all as I truly am all of you. There is just one Life and one Love, and I am here to apply love fully in all the possible situations of my life. Thank you, Lena, for all that you did and didn’t do, you are the one in your life! It sure took me a long time to get it, but I did! I am still alive!