THOUGHTS
ABOUT LIFE
Each day as I take my dog for a walk, I walk down the
service road that comes by my house. Three houses up from mine were people I
stayed away from for many years because they always seemed to be so negative
about the world and everything in it. It was a downer to talk to them. I had no
other reason to avoid them; they were respectable people who kept their place
nice and never gave anyone any problems. A few weeks back, I read an obituary
in the paper and the wife of the couple had passed away.
I didn’t think much more about them after that, until the
other day when I saw his vehicle there. He seemed to be tinkering out in the
yard like we all do when spring finally comes, but he didn’t look up as I
passed by so I kept on walking. Then it hit me. “That was you a year and ten
months ago. That was you after everyone gave you a final hug and went home to
their lives and you looked around that big old house full of fifty years of
memories and said, where do I start?”
This weekend I am going to go over there and see how he is
doing and I have no idea what I am going to say because I learned that there is
nothing I can say to make it better. But no one should suffer alone, so I want
to keep my mouth shut and just listen. I want him to tell me about her and not
why she died but why she meant so much to him while she lived. I want to tell
him not to be in a rush to change his life or get rid of anything. I have
learned that the picture of her and you together that made you break down sobbing
the day after the funeral-- a year or two from now will bring a gentle smile.
God said in the good book it isn’t good for man to live
alone. But for all of us who have lived in a committed relationship with
someone we love, even though we are now alone, we will never be alone. Our hearts will see to that. There is
something else that is good for us that our hearts can do, besides living and
reliving those memories. Almost magically they will heal themselves up if we
let them. She may well be the only one who you will ever call ‘wife’ but
somewhere there may just be another lonely heart whose hands are warm and are
waiting to be held. Don’t harden your heart.
In a couple of years or so, when the world is brighter and
you come out of your shell, maybe, just maybe, something nice could happen. I
know-- there is no one who can take her place but then your not replacing
anyone are you? You’re just building a little addition onto your life or adding
a few more chapters to your story and hopefully someone else’s too. It can be
as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Year’s ago when Doctors were
given their degrees and white coats; one of the things that was asked of them
was “To do no harm.” That should be the goal of anyone who is trying to melt
his or her life with someone else’s.
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