Love Lingers

Funeral procession for Diana, Princess of Wales, 1997

“The values of the heart, not those of the mind, have begun to be sought after and appreciated. We are witnessing a change of heart,” Jungian analyst Jim Fitzgerald wrote in the anthology, When a Princess Dies, following the death of Princess Diana in 1997. An unexpected, violent death that shocked and yet seemed to awaken something in people all over the world. A death that, in Shakespeare’s princely words, “cracked open a noble heart” — our universal heart — and love spilled out. “I think it was this that Diana, as a woman of the times, equally a sufferer from the ills and neuroses of modern life, it was this new heart that she represented,” Fitzgerald continued. Yet in the loss, love lingers. Afterall, this was a woman who, after marrying into a staid, duty-bound royal family, declared that her duty was “to go out and love people”…and the energy of that love lingers still.

Evolutionary spiritual teacher Patricia Albere, who speaks of love sourced from a higher dimension of creation, wrote about ‘lost love’ — when we lose someone close to us and how that love often stays with us. “With each loss,” Patricia wrote in Evolutionary Relationships about the death of close family members, lovers, beloved pets, “I comprehend more deeply that the most precious element of human life is the fact that we can love each other in ways that change us forever.” She spoke about how sometimes “when we lose a loved one, either to death or a breakup, we try to ‘get over’ that person in order to ‘move on’ with our lives. This rudimentary impulse denies not only the most powerful aspect of our relatedness, but the deeper truth that our relatedness continues.”

I thought of the young Princes William and Harry as boys — caught in the spectacle of their mother’s death — trying to “get over” the loss of their beloved mother somehow, attempting to distract their broken hearts so they could “move on,” away from the pain, relieve their suffering…with their “stiff upper lip” royal family members doing the best they could. Years later, as men in their early- and mid-thirties, they spoke openly about getting emotional support and their words and actions spoke “the deeper truth” of their “continued relatedness” with their mother. And out of that open-hearted relatedness, they both were committed to living a life of purpose and service.

In his biography Spare from 2022, Prince Harry wrote about attempting to find peace with how much he still longed for his mother’s presence. “I miss my mother every day…. Like so much about her, it was hard to put into words. The most recognizable woman on the planet, one of the most beloved, my mother was simply indescribable. And yet…how could someone so far beyond everyday language remain so real, so palpably present, so exquisitely vivid in my mind?” This is that perpetual relatedness that Patricia Albere explains, sharing how she learned through an experience of losing someone she loved deeply that “we are part of an invisible, interconnected field of intelligence.” So deeply related that our spirits remain in communication; not like ‘channeling’ the departed person, but communing with them on a higher level of human evolution. Perhaps that’s why remembrances of Princess Diana linger for so many…her open-hearted energy changed us forever (whether we were aware of it or not), and it continues still, moving through the Universe vibrant and alive. Like a distant star, long vanished, “yet it’s somehow still visible to mortal eyes because it’s just so awesomely bright and dazzling,” wrote Harry. “That was my mother.”

I feel the closeness of lost loved ones, experiencing an even more intimate relationship, especially with my mother and father. In fact, that ‘continued relatedness’ after the loss of a loved one has been proven by science. “Some researchers,” Patricia Albere explained, “have described the Theory of Entanglement as the quantum equivalent of telepathy.” Proposed in the 1930s and proven in 1997 (the same year as Diana’s death….hmmmm), the theory “states that once subatomic particles have been connected or paired, they can be separated by time and distance yet continue to affect each other. No force or energy needs to be present.” They just ‘remember’ from a deep, abiding, intimate place.

“When we surrender to the force of love and discover this higher level of relatedness,” Patricia wrote, “we feel radiant and connected not just to another person, but to all of existence. We also feel that the universe is becoming more whole through our unity with each other.” I read this with particular interest because this elevated dimension of love is exactly what I experience with other participants in Patricia’s online community. We are explorers into the future of human evolution, no one or no thing is separate from the other, we are drawn into something mutually loving, something eternal. (And a little kitten that I loved and lost long ago, who “visits” me still, lives in that welcoming place.) And for the first time in a long while, I feel optimistic about the world in which future generations will be born…this “shared unity” they will experience together.

I’m reminded of what sculptural artist Dario Robleto said during his art installation, “The Boundary of Life is Quietly Crossed,” inspired by the unmanned space probe of Voyager and its precious cargo known as the Golden Record — a recording called a love letter from Earth sent on a billion-year journey into space. The artist’s fascination with the recording — music, sounds from nature, images, spoken greetings, and the heartbeat of Ann Druyan recorded while focusing on her fiancé Carl Sagan, both members of the Golden Record team — centered around how it “revealed one of the greatest gifts of being human: love and love for another.” What message could this recording possibly express that would sum up the human experience on Earth? Robleto insisted it would be this: “Love survives the death of cells.” ~

[excerpt from book-in-progress, *The Spiritual Mission of a Princess*]

**corneliapowell.com**