It’s been almost seven years since Jay passed. Life looks nothing like it did. I’ve lived in five different states, worked in the public sector, higher education, the medical field, and currently I write for a nonprofit. My life is simple, yet full of uncertainty. It’s small. Quiet. Imperfect. There are parts of it that are broken. There are fractured relationships and healed ones I never thought would heal. There are some that will only heal if forgiveness occurs. There is my grief, of course, though it feels lighter almost seven years into the journey.
I go to church on Sundays and Bible study on Wednesdays. I walk in the evenings with my mom. I read scripture. I watch TV with the cats. I pay my bills. I go camping and hiking in the mountains to escape summer’s heat down in the valley where I live.
I sometimes drive up to Whiskeytown Lake to watch the sunset, its sky painted with horizontal watercolors — dark blue to light, yellow and orange against the purple silhouetted mountains in the distance. The water reflects the same, and there is something mesmerizing inside of that sunset. Something peaceful. Something loving and magnificent and overwhelming that puts everything into perspective for me.
The way the sky glows against the Trinity Mountains. The way the birds settle on branches to witness the closing of the day, a sinking sun sublime and revering in its descent. Why do we find ourselves witnessing the sunset? We do the same with sunrises. The beginnings and ends of things. They matter.
The beginning shapes our entire future, but the end calls to us in a different way.
My late husband and I were married for a long time. We started off wounded from our childhoods, ignorant and strong-willed. We thought we knew better than our parents. We promised we would never hurt each other, never make the parenting mistakes our parents made, except we did. We crashed and burned. We hurt each other. We found humility in our failures. We worked diligently to figure out how to let go of past pains, how to heal the best we could, how to love each other and our children the best we knew how with the skills we had.
After he died, none of those mistakes mattered anymore. None of the things we had ever fought about. None of his flaws or mine, none of our ignorances, even the ones that accidentally caused harm, none of that mattered. I witnessed only a man who spent his life doing the best he could to love and provide for his family. I saw only a father who did everything possible to raise his children. I saw only a husband who loved the best he knew how. I saw only us, and the beautiful life we pursued in earnest.
I see it all over again in those Whiskeytown Lake sunsets. I see the great man that he was, the beautiful love story we shared, our journey of raising our children with all that we had.
The imperfections and failures fade. I’m not critiquing the individual pieces of the sky — its clouds, its colors, its backdrop. I’m witnessing a completed masterpiece. The entire canvas. Somewhere in the glory of God’s sunset, we stop keeping score of every mistake and realize the beauty of the whole life.
