The Black River of Anguish

The Water's Edge

My wife's death, in many ways, has put me on a different side of life. It's profoundly changed my perspective on everything and I expect that during the next several months, it will make me a much different person than I've ever been.

I have no idea where I am right now or where I'm going. I've described it to some people as being like a ghost. I often feel like I'm only half way there, like I'm permeable. It makes sense when you realize that "my better half" is dead.

I've described my grief to people as a big black river. I'm following a path that winds sometimes far from the river, where it can't even be seen, and sometimes to its banks, and sometimes right into the opaque water.

A man in my position gets a lot of unsolicited spirituality, from quoted scripture to new age tropes. People urgently want to tell me that I will see or be with Wendy again. Their zeal indicates their own desperate desire for that to be true for themselves and their loved ones.

Do I believe in a God or some creative force in the universe? Yes. It just doesn't seem likely that this universe was created for us. Do skin cells go to heaven when they die? I think that we're cogs in the machine. I don't want that to be so. I want heaven to exist! I want to see Wendy again. In fact, if I was convinced that I would be reunited with her after death, there would be no keeping me here.

Alas, this is probably all we have. It's certainly all we can rely on. To be convinced otherwise is to be convinced that the sun turns around the earth. Hope is good, though. Let us all be hopeful.