A ride forty years long

Our fortieth wedding anniversary is tomorrow – it sits on the horizon like a fog I’m going to have to walk through. I’ve been fretting about it for weeks. Tomorrow will be another event in a year of painful firsts, a day to get through.  I’ve spent a lot of time in recent days in quiet reflection, remembering and feeling sad and lost. 

We had been engaged for ten months prior to our wedding and dated for six weeks before that. Although that sounds impetuous, ours wasn’t a whirlwind romance, I’d known him years before he made moves to impress me.  We seemed to skip right over the new relationship phase – it made no sense to waste time flirting, we had long since moved beyond making impressions.  When the stars aligned one night, and he kissed me that first time, a current ran through me – a knowing. This was it – he was the one.  I’m not sure he was rattled by the same current but it didn’t take long for him to pop the question. I won’t say we were destined but I will say we fit – fit together in a fashion I hadn’t experienced before. 

I don’t have to look too hard to see those early days when we were young and everything was brand new.  It is as clear in my mind as it was forty years ago.  Newlyweds with an unquenchable thirst for each other.  Oh God, I miss him.  Sometimes I still find myself waiting for him to walk in the door, like he left this morning.  How long ago was that? These weeks and months have blurred into one another and it was yesterday. 

Given the opportunity I would do our life together all over again, even knowing that these days were coming. I would walk down that aisle, take his hand and begin; begin our marriage, our life.  He was my future, I can’t get my head around forever without him.  And yet here I am, facing that forever. He is gone but I don’t think this marriage is over – I’m not done.

I would like to imagine him in another place, I want to believe his spirit walks beside me. I envy people with unfailing faith, with a belief that helps them sleep at night. I have too many questions, too many doubts.  I cling to the hope my skepticism is unfounded, that there is too much evidence around me to question faith.  But I question.  For me sleep is like a bad date, I can almost hear it sneaking out the door in the wee hours of the morning leaving me to toss and turn, his vacant pillow beside me. My days have too many hours and forever is a really long time.  

Forty years ago I began a walk that has lead me to today. Over the years I have been blessed beyond measure, I got to live my life with the person who was the love of it.  It was an adventure, a ride that was not always smooth but always better for the company I was keeping.  A ride I would take again.