Holding steady
I’ve been doing okay since my recovery from the trip aftermath. Since A passed, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about what happens when, and after we die, and I think I have a grasp (as much as one can have on something completely unknown) on something that comforts me, at least in the sense that I know he’s all right. He’s better than all right. We’re all all right, and when we die, there is nothing to fear. I know that my mourning is for me, and about what I don’t have and what I have lost through his apparent absence in my world.
But at the same time, he hasn’t been absent. He lets me know all the time that he’s around and that he loves me. His words and actions and beliefs that he shared with me when he was here echo in memory at precisely the moments I need to hear them, as if he’d said everything I’d need to know now to get through this, before either of us knew that I’d have to get through this. It’s really nothing less than miraculous, and I’m grateful beyond words. But I wasn’t acting grateful. I was acting ungrateful, my thought processes along the lines “Well, this is better than nothing. I’ll take what I can get.” Which are not the words of gratitude; they’re begrudging. And if I believe that he is out there, which I do; and if I believe that he’s watching over me and always with me, which I do; and if I believe that he is not in fact "dead" (only his body died), but living a continuing life I can’t even imagine, which I do, well, then, perhaps I should start acting like it.
I’m not sure where that thought came from, but it hit me like a thunderbolt, and I’ve been doing my best to keep it in mind. It is, of course, easier said than done, but I can only do what I can do. Days after I had that epiphany, I broke down crying because his birthday is coming up, and he won’t be here for it. And then I went to bed, got up the next day, and tried again.
I wrote to him about how much I appreciated the signs he sent me to let me know I was loved and not forgotten. They played a huge, and I mean HUGE, part in my healing since he left. Without them, I honestly don’t know where I’d be. And I talked to him about how I was afraid if I got to feeling too much better, he’d stop sending them. And I made a deal with him that if he kept sending them, I’d do my best to get on with my life. The next day I got a big sign that he was on board, so big I had to chuckle. When I told my friend P about it, she said, “Now THAT’S devotion.” I said, “It is, and I’m so thankful.” His soul always shone brighter to me than any I’d ever known. It still does, and I am blessed.