Today I smell like chocolate...

I am wearing a fragrance that makes me think of chocolate.

It is not one of my favorites,

but it was one of his.

 

I am wearing jewelry I don’t often wear anymore

because he gave it to me

and it seems disrespectful to my current life.

 

I am, as I write this,

lunching in a restaurant I no longer frequent.

 

I drove through the old neighborhood earlier.

And I went to the cemetery to change flowers.

 

Eight years ago today he went home.

 

I no longer grieve in the way I did on that day

and those anguished days that followed.

It is different now.

 

I think grief is much like marriage itself.

In the beginning, marriage is new and exciting,

filled with passion and emotions,

fluttering tummies and anticipation of

the end of the work day

when you are together again.

 

Over time, the passions, the high emotions

become calmer,

the love becomes quieter

and acquires depth and a lasting quality

that is missing in the beginning

before it has some wear.

 

And when your love is completed

and one of you celebrates the ultimate homecoming,

the whole process begins again,

but with grief.

 

On this day of Al’s homecoming,

I feel as I did on our wedding anniversaries

during his life –

a renewed sense of “honeymoon” then,

a renewed sense of grief now.

 

I want to briefly share a couple recent conversations.

I share them because today,

eight years later,

happily remarried,

is hard.

And people don’t understand why.

And most still won’t.

But I just need to say it.

Again.

 

As most of you who are regular readers know,

I am joyously remarried to my second great love.

A friend, recently widowed, asked me with a mix of dread and anticipation,

when I stopped loving Al.

The pain of her beloved’s death

is so intense that she wants it to stop.

Her love is so deep and she fears it will.

 

I answered emphatically –

NEVER!!!

My love for Al is complete.

It is no longer a growing, vibrant thing.

Neither is it dead.

Love is eternal!

I do not simply have a new great love,

I have two.

 

The second conversation is specific to Christians.

1 Thessalonians 4 tells us that Christians

are not to grieve as others do

for we have a hope, a sure knowledge,

that we will meet our Christian loved ones again

in Heaven.

This passage refers to our spirits,

our trust and faith in God.

It does not refer to our emotional response

to the earthly loss of a loved one in death.

 

Recently, someone intimated

that my Lanny Love and I still grieve the loss

of our first great loves

because we aren’t, or they weren’t, Christians.

That opinion was reiterated over several weeks in letters.

This person has never experienced an intimate loss.

His wife is living.

All his children are living.

All his grandchildren are living.

His parents are both still living.

His siblings are living.

My heart is heavy for the crisis of faith

that I fear he will experience

when his emotional response to the death

of one of these people

is grief.

 

So today, on this eighth homecoming celebration,

my grief has become noisy again, new and raw.

It will quiet,

but until then,

I lean into God,

I lean into my Lanny Love –

who sadly understands.

And I grieve the amputation that occurred

when the two that became one

once again became two.

 

I miss you, Alfie.

Happy homecoming day!

 

 

Now is your time of grief,

but I will see you again and you will rejoice,

and no one will take away your joy.

 

~~ John 16:22 ~~