ALMOST FOUR WEEKS

On the 18th of May (2012) I became a widow to go along with the other titles I have had over this lifetime. This was definitely not one I sought or especially appreciate, but it is so true that it is better to have loved and lost someone as kind as Lewis was, than to never to have known true love. While I attend grief counseling classes and try to spend as much time as possible thinking about positive things and staying busy with the kids or grands, each day brings reminders that he simply is not here in quite the same way. I hear him in my head telling me 'That's the way to do it' or something of that nature. I make my decisions based on how we lived together for all these years. After nearly 44 years, my mind is part and parcel with the way he thought and did things. I don't regret that in the least.


In 2010 I wrote a book called Destinations and had it published at SlightlyCreaky.com, and now it is an e-book on Amazon available as a Kindle book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0089E41MW  I know Fang would have wondered why I waited this long, but I had to re-read and edit it before I was satisfied. Also, my brother finally was here and read the manuscript and thought it was as good as any he had read. SO, I finally sent it in. One of these days soon I will see about getting it published in print. I personally prefer a printed book, but I am learning to enjoy the Kindle our daughter and her family gave me for either Mother's Day or my birthday. That entire month is a bit of a blur. We have several May birthdays. Jennifer had her birthday on the 17th of May and her daddy managed to wait until 12:30 to actually die on that night so it was May 18. He probably planned it that way, knowing him. He had us give ourselves a birthday party while he was still able to watch us and celebrate with us. Then, after Jennifer had gone home and was still feeling terribly weepy after his death, he came to her bedside in a dream and talked to her. She knew after that 'dream' that everything was going to be ok.





I suspect that my next book may be about grief--not mine, necessarily, but the mechanism and how grief and mourning are so very different. I had never in my entire life realized how totally draining grief could be--even before someone actually dies. When my brother and I had to put our parents in a care facility (read nursing home), we both were grieving the loss of our parents as we had known them. It has been nearly two years now, and we still MISS our parents even though they are still alive and in the same place as they were when we left them there. Parts of our life are just supposed to always be there for us--whether or not the people in it live in memory or in fact. Some of us who are older look back--not with longing for those days when we were young enough to jump fences, but for the attitudes that allowed us to easily love the times and the people we knew then. Oh, it would be wonderful if I still had the toned muscles and the bravado to take a horse over a fence, but now I would just love to have the courage to be able to face each day that comes my way without feeling as if I am all alone. Oh, others are here and around. But the love of my life no longer tells me how much I mean to him each morning and every night. Maybe in another four weeks, or four months, or four years...No, I will always miss him. Time is not going to change that. And maybe that is a good thing. Imagine how much God must love us to allow us to learn how to enjoy life with another person so closely that the person's absence makes life feel incomplete! After all, we are incomplete without God's love!