Love After Life

A week or so ago I moved everything of any kind of value downstairs - so I could stop air-conditioning it - since I never have a reason to go up there anymore and none of the kids ever spend the night up there There's plenty of room downstairs. I moved the stereo into my office and set it up this morning so Irene and I could listen to her country oldies at noon. I turned it on to make sure everything worked and put it on her station to see if the remote worked while I sat at my desk. After I got everything working I asked Irene to play the next song, and it was one I never heard before by Kane Brown, "What Ifs", and the chorus lyrics jumped all over me: "What if I was made for you and you were made for me, what if this is it, what if it's meant to be..."   Irene always told me that God made me just for her and that we were meant to be - she said that exactly, so many times I can't count. She even wrote it down in her journal after we met. I can alway...

Wow, still felt completely different when I woke up.  Got a little irrationally concerned that I had broken something or messed something up because I felt so unemotional.  I realized that if we are actually embarked on a new form of our relationship, the thing to keep in mind is that a lot of it before was actually bittersweet - love infused with pain and sorrow and a kind of forlorn, longing nostalgia (which started even before she died.)  I started getting hints of our new relationship, though, and it is just like I felt before that I have commented on when I experienced those times of grace the past couple of months – a happy, joyful, playful love without pain, sorrow or longing. Just did a session with Irene, not because I needed to relieve pain, or had to in order to help prevent pain, but because I wanted to!  No forlorn longing.  No grief or sadness – I just wanted to be with my wife and listen and do my part in establishing and understanding our n...