Kisses That Last a Lifetime

July 12th would have been our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. In the seven years since Rick died, I’ve gone through many different stages of grief, and I’m a different woman than that distraught widow from years ago. Instead of sadness over his death, I more often look back feeling thankful for experiencing our life together. Instead of constant grief triggers that can leave me despondent for days, I have fond memories that make me smile, or even laugh, when I remember some fantastic experience we shared.

I was reminded of how far I’ve come a few days ago, when I was brought to tears reading Alice Hoffman’s latest novel, The Invisible Hour. That’s not unusual. She’s always been one of my favorite writers because she has such a beautiful way with words. Her writing is magical, and her stories are filled with magnificent portrayals of what it is to love and to be loved. This passage about a pair of lovers who were spending what would probably be their last night together brought me to tears:

Life can be long or short, it is impossible to know, but every once in a while an entire life is spent in one night, the night when the windows are open and you can hear the last of the crickets’ call, when there is a chill in the air and the stars are bright, when nothing else matters, when a single kiss lasts longer than a lifetime, when you do not think about the future or the past, or whether or not you are walking through a dream rather than the real world, when everything you have always wanted and everything you are fated to mourn forever are tied together with black thread and then sewn with your own hand, when in the morning, as you wake and see the mountain in the distance, you will understand that whether or not you’ve made a mistake, whether or not you will lose all that you have, this is what it means to be human.

Wow! All that passion in one sentence! And after reading that and crying for a while over the loss of those passionate nights and that kind of love, I realized that every widow will relate to this because she understands having “everything you have always wanted and everything you are fated to mourn forever.“ And that the memory of those kisses we experienced in those wonderful moments together must now last us “longer than a lifetime.”

In the first few years after Rick’s death, looking back on our time together caused only pain, but now I’ve had years to process the grief. Now when I read something like this, I realize how privileged I am to have experienced that bond of love at all. Not everyone does.

So I guess this is a message of hope for those of you still mired in the despair of having lost the man you shared so much with. Eventually, after a few years, when the pain isn’t so new and raw and horrible, you’ll realize that you wouldn’t be suffering so much if you didn’t share those wonderful, magical nights with your beloved. As awful as that loss is, the pain was worth every precious moment you shared. And the memory of those kisses we experienced in those perfect moments together will, indeed, last us “longer than a lifetime.”

About Katherine Billings-Palmer

On August 13, 2017, I lost the love of my life. Rick Palmer and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary one month before he died at age 63 of complications from treatments for small cell lung cancer. He was my partner and soulmate, the love I had been looking for and finally found at age 40.

Rick was a talented writer and web designer and, in 2002, we began our own web and print design business. We worked together building the business and enjoyed traveling, writing, and playing together. Our dream was to spend our golden years together doing more of the same, but in the ten months from diagnosis to death, that dream shattered.

After Rick’s death, I quickly realized that the enormity of his loss was too much for me to handle on my own, so I began grief therapy. I also began writing through my grief in a journal of feelings, thoughts, memories, and poetry. As I navigate my new life alone, I share my journey and my efforts towards creating my “new normal” on my personal blog: The Writing Widow. I’m also on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

I recently published two books about my grief journey: my poetry book, I Wanted to Grow Old With You: A Widow's First Year of Grief in Poetry, and compilation of my blog posts A Widow's Words: Grief, Reflection, Prose, and Poetry - The First Year." Both books are available in print and Kindle versions on Amazon.com.