unlikely comfort

I have always had a paralyzing fear of spiders.  Like deathly afraid, can't even move when I see one.  When I was about 10 years old, I remember sitting on the floor in the kitchen putting away pots and pans, when I happened to look up and see a big black spider crawling up the wall.  It FREAKED me out!  I started to panic and yelled for someone to come kill it.  Nobody was all that concerned, this was a usual occurrence, and it was usually a teeny little spider or a 'harmless' daddy long-legs (I don't care how many times people tell me they are harmless, they CREEP me out!).  Anyhow, my mom told me to just squish it.  Nobody was coming and it was getting away, and if it got away who knows WHERE it would go... probably straight to my bed or something... so I made a pathetic attempt to kill it.  I swatted at it with a dishtowel just hard enough to knock it off of the wall and flip it upside down onto the kitchen floor.  Underneath on it's belly was the telltale red hourglass.  My biggest fear, a black widow.  I froze as it scurried under the kitchen cabinets where I had no hope of anyone killing it for me.  I was an anxious mess the rest of the day.  I couldn't focus, I couldn't calm down, and I couldn't even imagine going to sleep with that thing wandering the house.  Nothing my mom said could make it better.  Finally when my dad came home, my mom had had enough and told my dad to tell me to knock it off, I was being ridiculous.  He asked what I had seen, and I told him.  He told me he couldn't do anything, that it was long gone.  What he said next has always stuck with me.  He said, "well, I don't know what you are panicking about, there are tons more of them in this house, I have seen plenty of them in the attic."  I know, it sounds strange, but for some reason that was comforting to me.  There are tons of other ones out there, and they haven't killed me yet, so this one probably wouldn't either.  That was all I needed to calm down and let go.  And yes, I did sleep that night.  So how does this story relate to my life right now?  I don't know if it really does, but I tell you that story to tell you another.  A couple of weeks after Miles' passing I received a letter from a close friend's mother-in-law who had lost a baby a little over 40 years ago.  She shared her feelings and experiences, and said that she to this day still thinks of him, and still misses him.  My first thought was 'really, in 40 years I am still going to feel like this, it's never going to go away?'  But just like the with the spider, it brought an unlikely feeling of comfort and peace.  She had made it 40 years, and she was happy and had a good life, and it hadn't killed her yet.  There are plenty more years of pain and grief ahead, but knowing that they are out there and that they are survivable has brought comfort.