(If you want to hear Lori read the story click) here

 

My neighbor will die in a few days. His wife will never sit across the table from his smiling face again. The pain in the house is 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?

 

How can any of the trail of people who come and go all day and into the night plunge out again into a world that pretends that who wins the Super Bowl even matters? 

 

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 rain, appropriately crying on our street.

 

It rained the day of my mother's funeral too. I wonder if there are microscopic condolences sent in each drop from the sky, from the angels who defy 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. 

 

The problem with the rain now is that the earth is so saturated already it cannot soak up more water. That is not the rain's fault. I feel too saturated with sadness to absorb more, so I let it spill out onto the floor.

 

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 apart by death or separation is to feel torn, and watch our insides explode apart.

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

Conjugial Love 371

 

 

Photo by Andy Sullivan

you can support us at

www.caringformarriage.org