A friend said that six people he knew died this month. Some were up in years, and the departure was expected. Grandmothers whose children and grandchildren filled the pews at the memorial service had wrung their eighty years dry, until all that was left was a body no longer worthy of the life within. 

Not so for a man who will never sit across the table from his wife's smiling face again. The pain in the house is probably thick, yet somehow the tenderness is too. How is it that both feelings, which seem to be opponents in the war for our attention, can fill the space with no halvesies?

It is hard to do normal things when someone you love is leaving, or has already gone. I want to sit silently in a chair and listen to the wind, appropriately crying on our street.

It rained the day of my mother's funeral. I wonder if there are microscopic condolences wrapped in each drop out of the sky, from the angels who defied my emptiness with their anticipation. Maybe if I gather the drops together into a pool big enough to cover me it will wash away the burning. God tells me that He is preparing a place for this cherished person whom I already know and the angels are eagerly waiting to welcome.  

But I was not done loving these people. I do not want to give them up yet. 

Marriage brings with it the threat of loss. Our hearts are not made of velcro, easily attached and just as easily released. We stick more tightly than that, with a million tiny stitches from each shared moment and warm embrace. The music we shared, the foods we savored in each other's company, the small kindnesses given are the threads that bind us into one garment. To be ripped by death or separation is to feel torn, and watch our insides shred apart.

But I don't see any other way. To not love is to miss being sewn together at all.