With Great Love, Comes Great Pain

My Sweet Michael,

It's been 5 months since I last kissed your face.  On the 5th year anniversary of the first time you told me you loved me (yes, I kept track of those dates), I received my widows ring in the mail.  On that beautiful day 5 years ago, I would have never dreamed that today, I would be your widow instead of your wife.

But Baby, in those five years, we had the fairy tale.  We had love, we had adventure.  We faced trials and we triumphed.  In five years we made so many memories that I will spend the rest of my life reliving them.  You were my great love.  You were the person that my whole life was lived towards loving.  You were my soulmate,  my breath, my life and my world.  And with great love, comes great pain.

Losing you has been the most painful thing in my life.  I have wondered if I would die from the agony.  There have been times that the pain became so crushing, that it took my breath away.  Days that just waking up took all my energy and going to bed took all my resolve.

In this world of grievers that I now find myself living in, the one phrase that we all say at one time or another is "I don't want to live without him".  And we mean it.  At that time, more than anything we want to be with our lover, we want the pain to stop.  But, really, what we mean is not that we want to die, rather we want you to come back to the life that we loved.

Then comes the time we realize that our lover won't come back and we seriously consider that our dying is the only way that we will ever be whole again.  We have to find a reason, a reason to keep living.  Other than for our children, or our friends, we have to find a reason to keep living for the love that we so desperately miss.

And so I choose to honor you by living.  I honor you by being the person to carry the memory of you, as only I knew you.  I honor you by keeping alive the love that was yours.  I know that as long as I live, that there will be someone who loved you above all others.  As long as I live, you will live also. And I honor  you by grieving.

My grief says that you are worthy of being mourned.  My grief says that my love continues and that the world was better with you in it.  My grief is my gift to you, my husband.  The only gift that I can give you now.

The seasons are changing and time is passing.  I still wake up and look around and realize that the world has continued to turn.  I look forward and see the Holidays coming quickly, I see the dark, rainy days of winter looming ominously, bringing the depression that we always feared with it.  I see endless days and nights of missing you and the exhaustion of surviving all this reaches to my bones.

But, I will pray that I can look at only today.  I pray that I will have the strength to pray and to put my feet on the ground and live.  I will pray that I can keep your memory alive in our little guy.  That he can someday be the man that his Popi was.  So be patient with me Baby.  I'm only just learning to feel my way in this world.  But I promise I will try.  I promise I will live until it's my turn to come to you once again.

And so I live and I grieve and I mourn.  I do this because I had my great love and am honored to be the one chosen to bear this pain.

I love you, Michael.  I love you with every breath I take.