{"id":2351,"date":"2015-03-31T20:28:32","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T00:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/?p=2351"},"modified":"2015-06-11T12:08:31","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T16:08:31","slug":"worlds-greatest-magic-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/31\/worlds-greatest-magic-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"World&#8217;s Greatest Magic Trick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(from my 4\/26\/14 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/HoneyIShrunkTheGrief\/photos\/a.362323753815353.75034.359976660716729\/653901601324232\/?type=1&amp;permPage=1\" target=\"_blank\">HoneyIShrunkTheGrief.com Facebook post<\/a>&#8230;revisited and posted\u00a0here today, 3\/31\/15, in honor of today being Julie&#8217;s 11-year memorial day.\u00a0 Love you, Julie!\u00a0 Miss you!\u00a0 And thank you for\u00a0remaining\u00a0an ultra-loving part of my life)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/fb_love_saw_pic_april2014.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-2352\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/fb_love_saw_pic_april2014-1024x768.jpg\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/fb_love_saw_pic_april2014-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/fb_love_saw_pic_april2014-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/fb_love_saw_pic_april2014-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/fb_love_saw_pic_april2014.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\n&#8220;Love reveals death&#8217;s illusion.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Those words just came to mind and inspired this post. For I&#8217;ve come to view Death as one of life&#8217;s greatest magicians. Death can (unintentionally, I believe) trick its audience into fearing that horrifying things have occurred. But I&#8217;m learning that it&#8217;s all a great big illusion. Death does not separate, destroy, and bring one to the ground broken-hearted and in tears. It&#8217;s the illusion that does. The illusion-of-death tricks us into believing that it robbed us of what we live for &#8212; Love.<\/p>\n<p>Death, at least at first impression, feels like a performer with an incredibly warped, sick, twisted sense of humor; a performer who feeds off of fear and pain. But, I&#8217;m finding that the kicker, and beauty, is that this form of death cannot exist if one doesn&#8217;t give power to one of this world&#8217;s\u00a0most believable\u00a0tricks: &#8220;the illusion that a loved one &#8212; that love &#8212; is gone&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m here to declare, to myself, and anyone else interested, that this form of death is bogus. This first impression that is so easy to believe is all a sham. Death is confusing, and convincing &#8212; but my heart is, and knows, better. The saving grace and truth is: <em>if I want to connect to a loved one soulfully<\/em> (the best kind of connection in my opinion), <em>I can do so &#8212; at anytime &#8212; and in countless ways.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The only trouble is, when in the midst of going through a tragedy, I also recognize that it&#8217;s extremely difficult to not be fooled by death&#8217;s illusion. Death can be so confusing that it can even make pain feel comforting and sought after&#8230;because&#8230;well, I don&#8217;t know why, but I&#8217;ve experienced it so I know it to be true. Maybe pain has the ability to\u00a0be comforting because it&#8217;s distracting. It distracts from the scary, new, and unknown. It distracts from the magician&#8217;s trick of &#8220;sawing someone in half&#8221;&#8230;a trick that leads us to believe in the worst. It&#8217;s difficult not to buy into this painful version of the experience, even if we know better and realize we&#8217;re at a magic show. It&#8217;s difficult not to believe that our loved one is gone&#8230;because we can feel them sawed, cut &#8212; separated &#8212; from us. So maybe pain is necessary because it numbs, teaches, and allows for growth&#8230;adjustment. I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>But I do know that love will come to the rescue. Love will show death&#8217;s performance in slow motion, and from numerous angles. Love will calm and reveal&#8230;and expose what I believe to be one of this life&#8217;s greatest truths: Death does not have to be feared&#8230;death does not have to destroy, abandon. For death is simply a change, a transformation, that allows the essence of us &#8212; love &#8212; to become something even more beautiful. Death gives the griever, and the deceased (for lack of a better word), an incredible gift &#8212; powerful wings with even greater capability. In turn, making death, as holy and as beautiful as life&#8230;as birth. Because death is not the end, but rather a limitless continuation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>~ \u00a0 ~ \u00a0 ~ \u00a0 ~ \u00a0 ~ \u00a0 ~ \u00a0 ~<br \/>\nNow on Facebook!\u00a0<a title=\"click here for my HISTG.com FB page\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/HoneyIShrunkTheGrief\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/HoneyIShrunkTheGrief <\/a><br \/>\nNow on Twitter!\u00a0<a title=\"click here for my HISTG.com Twitter page\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EricVaiksnoras\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/EricVaiksnoras<\/a><br \/>\nCheck out my book!\u00a0<a title=\"my book \" href=\"http:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/book\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/book\/ <\/a><br \/>\nFeeling grateful? or feeling low?\u00a0<a title=\"HISTG Thank You Card blog post\" href=\"http:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/27\/sign-the-thank-you-card-today\/\">Sign the Thank You Card! \u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"click here to return to my home page\" href=\"http:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/\">click here to return to home page<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(from my 4\/26\/14 HoneyIShrunkTheGrief.com Facebook post&#8230;revisited and posted\u00a0here today, 3\/31\/15, in honor of today being Julie&#8217;s 11-year memorial day.\u00a0 Love you, Julie!\u00a0 Miss you!\u00a0 And thank you for\u00a0remaining\u00a0an ultra-loving part of my life) &#8220;Love reveals death&#8217;s illusion.&#8221; Those words just &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/31\/worlds-greatest-magic-trick\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,119,192,129,193,267,85,109,183,277,185,13,54,14,44,21,184,253,130,290,287,136,131,12,20,11,292,57,25],"class_list":["post-2351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-love-will-find-a-way","tag-a-young-widower-discovers-love-will-find-a-way","tag-all-are-one","tag-celebrate-our-disabilities-and-heartbreaks-for-they-make-us-beautiful","tag-death","tag-defy","tag-different-can-be-good","tag-eric-vaiksnoras","tag-faith","tag-feeling-grateful-or-feeling-low-sign-the-thank-you-card","tag-finding-love-in-grief","tag-follow-on-twitter","tag-grief","tag-griever","tag-grieving","tag-honey-i-shrunk-the-grief","tag-hope","tag-like-on-facebook","tag-live-laugh-and-love","tag-loss","tag-love-heals","tag-love-lights-the-way","tag-loving-thoughts-and-actions-give-my-life-meaning","tag-mourn","tag-widow","tag-widowed","tag-widower","tag-worlds-greatest-magic-trick","tag-www-honeyishrunkthegrief-com","tag-young-widower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2351"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2398,"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions\/2398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honeyishrunkthegrief.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}