courage

Tonight I finished reading the book Rooftoppers to Caroline, and in the process ran across this:

'I don't care,' Sophie said again. She meant it. She had never felt less afraid. Perhaps, she thought, that's what love does. It's not there to make you feel special. It's to make you brave. It was like a ration pack in the desert, she thought, like a box of matches in a dark wood. Love and courage, thought Sophie: two words for the same thing. You didn't need the person to be there with you, even, perhaps. Just alive, somewhere.

I have this feeling about my grandfather, who isn't alive somewhere, except that after he died I had this strong sense that he was watching - loving - me from heaven. And this sense that he loves me - the enduring experience of he-loved-me, I guess - is somehow different than loving myself or feeling loveable or anything that I can generate from within. It's a sense of composure, and yes, courage: he always (inexplicably, but faithfully) believed in me, so I can believe in myself.