Do you ever wonder about....

If you were a fan of the sitcom "Designing Women"

you probably remember the Charlene character's ability

to be endlessly fascinated by absolutely nothing.

I am one of those.

And I have a friend who is apparently also one of those.

He posts a daily question on social media

designed to spur conversation

and make one think outside the box.

 

His posts have inspired me to embrace my wonderings in a new way

and I have decided that some of them -

those not just too weird for public perusal at any rate -

would make good blog posts.

And would have the side benefit

of helping me work out some of my strange and endless fascinations

on someone other than my unceasingly patient husband.

 

Well...some of those I post might be too weird for public perusal.....

okay, most of them most likely......

 

Stay tuned...........

45

I always loved that we chose the first day of spring!

Of course, in the deep south where we fell in love,

spring had been sprung weeks earlier,

but still, the "new beginning" appealed to me.

 

It wasn't our first date choice.

Originally, it was to be a week later

which, as it turned out,

was the day years later

that my mother and his brother died.

I was so glad we changed it!

 

This is the 45th.

How is that even possible?

I was 18 when we married,

I don't feel much older than that now.

We shared 36.

Just six weeks short of our 37th,

he went Home.

So today, I commemorate alone.

 

We used to look forward to our 50^th.

We deserved it, we said!

We were 18 and 20 when we said “I do”,

so young and inexperienced!

And we both came from homes

that did not model excellence in marriage.

And we were very different personalities.

So we worked hard and we learned.

And we made a good marriage

between two people who loved each other deeply,

wanted to be together more than they wanted to be “right”,

and were passionate about marriage in general

and marriage to each other in particular.

 

We’d had crushes.

But I was the only woman he ever loved,

and he was the only man I’d ever loved.

Sometimes I miss that.

 

We weren’t perfect,

far from it!

To be honest, we weren’t even well suited to one another.

Maybe we “shouldn’t” have married.

But I’m so, so, so very glad we did!

 

 

Put me like a seal on your heart,
    like a seal on your arm.
Love is as strong as death;
    jealousy is as strong as the grave.
Love bursts into flames
    and burns like a hot fire.
Even much water cannot put out the flame of love;
    floods cannot drown love.
If a man offered everything in his house for love,
    people would totally reject it.

 

~~ Song of Solomon 8:6-7 ~~

Another first

Today, our first grandchild marries and I wish for numbness as the empty seat looms very large and my heart aches anew... Eight years later, I have come to realize that the "firsts" go on for life. 

And yet, God is good! Today, I will open the wedding party entrance as grandmother of the groom and will walk down the aisle on the arm of a wonderful man, a great gift from God who understands all too well! I will gain a precious granddaughter! And while I will grieve his absence, I will carry for my late-beloved his pride for the man our grandson has become and will cherish the memories that we made and shared with this amazing man-child, his wedding ring tucked in the petals of my corsage. Laughter through tears, joy through a broken heart.

My God is indeed great and good!

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 ~~