It Happens Every Day

Well. There's no nice way to say this. A friend of mine, a member of the mother's group I'm a part of, lost her husband last night.

She's a mother of four beautiful children. Her husband was 42 years old.

It is simply devastating.

***

I am sad because I am human, and I am sad because it could happen to me. It could happen to anybody.

It does. Every day.

Last night, I asked Paul, the finance guy in our house, to go over every account, every password. Attempting to control the uncontrollable, I pretended that my primary concern was dollars and cents, not the warmth on my cheek as he kisses me goodbye each morning.

I asked him where he would want me to spread his ashes, and I kept it together until he said that some of the ashes should go in the trickle of a creek at his Mom and Dad's house.

I pictured him as a little boy, playing in that trickle, splashing and hopeful, with the whole world ahead of him.

And just like that, the hypothetical conversation became all too real. I felt like I had lost him, although he was right next to me, breathing the same air.  Present. Alive. Whole.

I love him. He loves me. That is real. That is alive.

My friend loves her husband, and he left this world knowing she loved him. That is real. It is alive in the stories she shares, and in her children's faces, gaits, gestures, and expressions.

But it is no longer whole.

Paul and I are celebrating our eleventh anniversary on Saturday. Although I don't know how many anniversaries we have left, we have this one. For that, I give thanks.

And to my friend, I send my utmost sympathy and love.

“Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our
lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are
happy.” ---Eskimo Proverb