Unanswered Space

Good morning to my Widow and Widower friends. I hope you all have been doing well.

I know this post will resonate with some of you, who, like me, still have questions we will never have answers for. We exist in this unanswered space between death and living again. I’m glad that we can offer each other comfort and hope for what lies ahead.

Stay strong, and I pray God’s abundant blessings for you all. Take care!

Unanswered Space

You left in a way that I never expected. It was so sudden and brutal to my heart.

I could hardly bear to see you lie helpless and without a voice. You could not speak, you could not move. Your life was suspended in a silent void that I could not enter.

I watched you fight for your life with all that was in you, and you held on as long as you could. Your body was literally feeding on itself until you used yourself up.

The silence in the room was terrifying. It continuously screamed at me in the quiet space of nothingness. The feeling in the room was very unsettling. It made me feel as if I were standing in an endless ocean, looking into the abyss, where I catch a glimpse of your silhouette as the tide has you in its grasp. You are doing your best to swim towards me, but the current is too strong.

The wind sings out your laughter, and it gently floats across the sky, and yes, the sky remembers what we lost, and it knows how strong our love is, and it knows we will never let go of each other, not even in death.

I watch the clouds drift heavily in the rain-filled sky. I would have swam through many more storms to get to you, but I was not given the choice. Instead, I had to watch in pain as you floated away in the storm. You were too far away for anyone here to save you.

For now, I’m drowning in my memories of a storm we couldn’t tame, and this breaks my heart over and over again. I know that we built a life raft made of hope, but the waves tore it apart. It was painful to watch you fade farther and farther away as you drifted helplessly, and time took you away.

The ocean that lies between us now will continue to whisper your name.

My heart doesn’t know what to do without you, other than just being content where you are, and just let my grieving sleep and pray for peace.

Some days, I can still feel you in the air, in the stillness, in the way my heart pauses as if it’s listening for your voice that truthfully will never come. Still, the heart and the mind hope, still believe in miracles, not excepting the inevitability of death. Faith is a powerful component, because we hope for the things not seen but still believe they are so.

And on other days in the waiting, it’s unsettling; it feels final, heavy, and it haunts you, knowing it is something that cannot be changed. That’s the cruelest part, knowing that I can’t hold on to you. All I have now is an echo of who you used to be—memories of a past life that will cruelly fade in time. Grief holds you tight, but there is hope that time will begin to bury all the pain, or at least lessen it.

How do I grieve something that still feels alive?

How do I let go? When my love never did?

So I live here, between hope and goodbye,

Still loving you in this unanswered space that I exist in now. I’m trying to find love again, but death lies heavy in my soul.

Guilt floods my mind, taunting me with what I should have done better, and I feel guilt in my thoughts that I should have been able to save you. I have questions. Did I do everything I could? I tried with everything I had inside me to no avail. Death continued to toy with my mind every day.

No matter what I said or did, changed anything, or so I thought. I prayed every day for God to take your burdens away and give you the healing you needed. Sometimes I think my prayers weren’t answered, and other times I know they were.

Thank you, Jesus, for your grace and salvation, as You so lovingly and selflessly expressed on Easter Sunday. Your death and resurrection gave all people who love and follow You access to their heavenly home.

The road ahead is paved with uncertainty and full of potholes, dips, unexpected sharp turns, and hazards too many to name, waiting for all of us as we head into the distance, where a new beginning awaits us.

I’ve packed my mind with memories of a time gone by. My heart carries a few memories of us as mementos of wonderful times, embedded in our hearts. But the reality is, we must carry on with half of us missing from our lives. Change will come slowly, and it will be both painful and joyful.

New love will be easy to find for some and very hard for others. Some will not seek new love at all, and some will never find it again, and in my case, it will be nearly impossible to hold on to because it’s a conundrum in my mind, with all answers being conjectural.

Will it be possible to love again? Yes….Maybe…I don’t know.

I’ve had a lifetime already living with the love of my life, and she died on me. I’m not sure if I will ever truly get by that fact because she truly loved me just as I am, and I loved her the very same. Honestly, my heart is not in that same place now. I have new wants, desires, and expectations now that will never fly in a new marriage of older people with a lifetime of ways and habits behind them. Or so, “I thinketh anyway.”

I won’t compromise my faith for personal gain or vanity of any kind. God has the perfect person for all of us. We must be patient in the waiting. God will open our eyes to what we need to see, and He will remove the things that harm us.

God first, and then everything else.

What lies ahead in the “Unanswered Space?”

This is a question that none of us can answer.

But! I will answer anyway in Forest Gump style: Life is like water that you try to hold in your hands. Eventually, all the water runs through your fingers until you have nothing left to hold.

Credit: Ann Marie / Edited and reimagined by Larry Edge

Credit: Part of my inspiration comes from this song. Fallen Vessel: The Ocean Between Us

Song: The Ocean Between Us