Love and Loss, According to Rumi
A maxi message from the Farsighted Observer
Rumi had this to say about love:
“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
Monday of this week past marked what would have been my 23rd wedding anniversary with Joe and the fifth I’ve spent alone. The 23rd anniversary on the 23rd of the month. June 23 holds significance for me in a number of ways.
Joe chose that date as a marker for us in 2001, when we reunited our relationship following a rocky break-up period. It was a reunion to remember and he wanted to establish a “fresh start” commemoration.
We married on that date a year later.
I have to say many years passed with only small attention paid to the date. We weren’t big occasion observers, but he would manage to surprise me with something each year. Very Joe-like.
A single flower wrapped in a print of the photo he took of it and tied with ribbon. The print was so I had the memory of it to keep long after the flower was gone. Like his love, he said. Forever.
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
This is crazy true in so many ways.
The night Joe and I met, I knew he was “my guy.” Our first date confirmed it. We were both fresh out of previous marriages and commitment wasn’t in the cards at the time, but it didn’t matter.
He was my guy and I held onto that through many circumstances that should have ended our relationship over the five years we dated. We were on and off, but mostly on despite the things that end most relationships.
Because of the love.
Because we were in each other all along. Probably through many lifetimes.
Perfect relationships don’t exist. But we were perfect for each other. And that was all we needed, truly. When I say we didn’t have much else, I’m not exaggerating. Yet what we lacked in the material world seemed insignificant compared to what we held in each other.
We had a connection that’s difficult to describe and even more difficult to find. We knew it and we cherished our time together.
The cancer diagnosis came unexpectedly in August 2020, and the disease progressed quickly. Three months later, he left this earth.
But he never left me.
Telepathic communication was our thing. Together almost 24/7 since 2004 when we merged our businesses and our home, it didn’t strike us as unlikely. Of course we knew what the other was thinking. We spoke the same thing at the same time. Time and time again.
But as his illness crept insidiously through his body, it became more difficult for him to speak. And one morning I realized that in addition to knowing what he was thinking, I was also sharing his dreams and even some of his physical symptoms.
Lovers are in each other all along.
When Joe took his last breath as the hospice wall clock moved from 5:29 to 5:30, I knew there would not be another. I felt his spirit lift from his body and knew where it went.
I packed my things and rushed home, much to the nurses’ surprise. I suppose most grieving survivors linger, spending as many last moments with their loved ones as they can.
But my loved one was no longer in that body I had loved so dearly. He was home and waiting for me. I saw him that evening in the shadows of our bedroom as I sat alone in our bed, wondering how I was even able to breathe without him.
Shortly after Joe’s transition, I began to experience the kinds of physical things he had known, but I had not. Purple splotches on my arms and legs from tiny bumps against things. Big patches of skin peeling back from minor scrapes. Blood left on pillows and sheets from those bruises.
Several months later at my yearly physical, routine blood tests showed elevated liver enzymes—a completely out of blue occurrence for me. But not for Joe. He died of liver cancer.
Lovers are in each other all along.
Two years ago, I was in Fort Lauderdale the weekend after our anniversary date. For this visit, I stayed in an airbnb—directly across the street from the apartment we had rented on the beach the first two years of our marriage.
I watched the sunrise over the ocean each morning, as we had done many times. The first morning I had a deeply spiritual connection with him as the sun exploded before me.
Afterwards, I walked south on the beach, not ready to return to my tiny room just yet. After several minutes something prompted me to turn around and look at the street. I was standing opposite the restaurant where we had married.
In that moment, I was told where and when to release his ashes. The location is private, but the date was our anniversary the following year.
So I returned last year and on June 23, 2024, sat with him one last time on the beach at sunrise before he completed his return to the earth.
What Rumi said about loss:
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
I’ve written here more than a few times about the kind of communication that continues between us. And shortly, a series of essays on the topic will be released.
This essay you’re reading was written on June 23, 2025. Joe sent his present earlier that day in the form of an unexpected contact that turned into a Tarot reading booking. My guy is still looking out for me.
Oh, and I wrote this essay in one sitting. That’s a rarity for me. Yes, edits later on, but to write the full length of the message in one flow is a gift received from Joe and my Muse.
How do I know? Here’s the thing… sometimes I just know what I know. You’ve probably experienced that feeling at least once or twice, too. An idea, a “knowing,” drops in with certainty, and that’s that.
It’s called claircognizance (clear knowing).
I believe that’s what Rumi meant when he wrote, “Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
True love is never lost. It just comes round in another form. But Rumi, dear—that doesn’t mean I don’t continue to grieve. I am still in human form, after all.
New Release Coming Soon
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Thanks for sharing your story. I cannot know what you experienced, but it opens my eyes to something different.
I too lived in Fort Lauderdale and lived there for done time. For three years straight I went every sunrise to the beach with my camera.
I also know a little about claircognizant. I didn't know until recently what it was, and here all my life I had these sudden knowings. Different from regular thoughts.