How fortunate we are to journey with someone who shares our thoughts, our ideas and our heart. I have been blessed to have had 27 wonderful years with such a person. We grew, we learned, we laughed, we loved, we cried and evolved as better people for having known each other.

In the shadows of grief it is hard to ever think you can go on to live life without this person. You don’t want to hear that it will get better, you just want that person back. You grasp for anything to give you a “tangible” connection to your loved one after they die. You are reminded each day that they will never walk through the door at the end of the day again. As preparations are made and business affairs wrapped up the realization stabs through the numbness as you go through the motions to remind you that they are never coming back. The mental gymnastics you tell yourself to try to ease your pain work for a short time. You cannot reason with it.

What I have found is that our love, the love we had, now looks at me from a new place to slowly begin to heal me. No, I can’t hug my husband again, or hold his hand, but I can remember his smile, the fun we had and the lessons learned. I want our life to have stood for something and to identify my new life in the light of this understanding. His mission is over, I am still here. What is my purpose, what does this look like?

My husband would want me to go forward. He still encourages me from the other side with the warmth I feel as I look at our favorite garden, or the moon shining brightly in the dark night sky. He is still here in our new relationship. One I cannot explain, it is unique. It is in this uniqueness that a new light shines and a new life will emerge, my own.

There is no shadow that can sever the connection that love has forged between two people, only light that promises to show the way here on earth and eventually guide us back home to our loved one.

It is comforting to know that so many of us can understand one another when it comes to losing a loved one. We join hearts in the midst of our struggles to gain the footholds that move us towards our futures, not alone, but with each other.

Ginny Brown