Richard J Grund

You became one on your wedding day, and now you are only half of what you once were. From half to whole and then half again.

You will look for them in their favorite chair or at a place where memories have been made, and won’t see them except in your mind.

You suffer from phantom limb syndrome, where that part of you has been amputated, but you continue to feel it and think it’s still there. But when you look, you are shocked back to the reality that it’s gone.

You are never prepared, no matter how much you think you are. The tearing away of their life from yours resonates deep inside your soul in ways that cannot be explained.

Everything lasts twice as long and hurts twice as much.

Your legacy with them is in the memories created and the family you co-created with God.

Memories that remind you of them and the fact that they are no longer with you. Smiles are mixed with tears. In time, the tears will lessen, but the smiles and joy won’t.

All the disagreements and fights now seem like such a waste of time that they stole precious moments from your life with them.

If you are tasked with watching them die, you use every waking moment apologizing and wishing that you hadn’t thrown those moments away. Even though they say you are forgiven, you have a hard time forgiving yourself.

Watching them lie there breathing those deep, shallow breaths, you remember the first time you watched them breathing in their sleep as your mate and remember how awestruck you were at the wonder of the blessing that God had placed in your life.

Hearing the words “I love you” as the last words they speak to you in this world remains emblazoned on your heart and mind. Never to be forgotten. Always cherished.

You know that once they step out of that broken body, they will be free of this fallen world and all that sin has produced in it. No more pain. No more sadness. Paradise with the Lord where the sun always shines, love is always felt, and reunion is just a blink of an eye away.

Until then…

The love goes on. It grows from the watering of your eyes into the fertile ground of your heart.

Life goes on. You choose to live it by the grace of God.

They wouldn’t want it any other way.