Love or Solitude?

It was while I was so ill with cancer that the thought of the pain of my death first hit my conscious. While there was not a lot of fear towards death, I worried about how my death would affect my family and friends. I didn't want them to be hurt, so I fought hard ... and lived.

It caused me to wonder if animals don't have the right idea. So many of them go off to be alone to die. Is their leaving the group a conscious decision, to spare the group the grief of their passing or just nature's way to keep the whole group from becoming ill at whatever malady that is killing them?

Recent events have brought those worries back to my mind. While not by death, I have recently lost someone whom I adored. It got me to thinking about the pain of loss.

There are times these days when, while doing some mundane task, a whimper of pain escapes from the depth of my soul. I won't even be consciously thinking of the one that is lost, but suddenly a moan of despair wells up and forces itself out of my mouth. It is about this time that my eyes usually fill with tears and the face of my beloved appears before the eyes in my mind. At about that point in time, I feel my whole body join in pain for the absence of my beloved.

While Shakespeare may be right that "it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all", he didn't say just how many times we are supposed to allow this to happen. I've had four serious relationships, and a few that were not so serious, in my lifetime. I even married one of the men for 19 years, until events drove us apart. I don't think I ever felt about any of them, the depth of devotion that I felt for my beloved, which is why I am suffering so much now.
So, that brings me back to my first thought, is it better to spend the rest of my life alone? Should I do it to protect myself from ever feeling this pain again?