It's a cloudy, rainy, very dark day; the kind of day it must have been when Gwen wrote this in a letter to me: "Today is just miserable. It's raining and you're not here." Today as I read those words I am taken by their sheer simplicity and the raw emotion they reveal. At the time she wrote them she had no way of knowing how much comfort they would bring me on a day like today; and they are as true now as they were then.
All morning I've had that "I still can't believe it's true that Gwen is dead." kind of feeling. It's been almost a year, yet I have no clear picture in my head of what I look like without her. Marje, a friend in a bereavement group I attend, said it well while we were sharing pictures of our beloved: "I have no pictures of the life I have now." Those pictures are slowly beginning to develop in my life. It will eventually be a collage of pictures of an individual who is grateful that he shared a love with someone who made sure that none of his rainy days were miserable. The person in those pictures will look happy, but at times there will also be a sad, far-away look in his eyes. I'm reminded again of a quote by Oscar Wilde: " . . . .to become a deeper person is the privilege of those who suffer." Gwen wants me to be happy, and I know I will be, but in a deeper, more meaningful way, because of days like today.
Thank you, Dear, for allowing your poetic self to write those words to me long ago.
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