5 years without him and I still feel unsettled. I prepare meals and loved ones gather around the table, yet my heart still feels like it can’t be made right without him walking through the door, arriving home from work and being home, seated at the head of the table, loving his family, and saying grace. He is always missing and the feeling of the dearest person in my life always missing makes it awfully hard to be OK with still slugging away here in this life, forever apart.
After five years, I think I have learned that I shouldn’t really ever expect and anticipate a feeling of wholeness or completeness ever again in the center of my heart. Instead I think I should just accept that for the rest of my life, there will be pieces I lack inside, and I hate that. Truth be told, underneath everything I do, there is kind of an underlying current of grief and a feeling of missing what I had, and what I thought I would still have. It never really stops, but few realize its constant presence in my life.
Usually my ability to choose cheerfulness, to smile despite what I am really thinking, and to “fake it until I make it,” serves to be a mask that a lot of people seem to believe. God knows the truth though.
And the truth is that I miss my very best friend and I would do anything possible to have him here with me….but it isn’t possible. It is impossible, and I often resent that. Life was a million times more wonderful because he was in my life and his absence has left the worst emptiness.
I wonder what it is like in heaven after five years. Does he realize five years has even gone by or does it just feel like a few minutes? Will I get to heaven one day and he feels like it has only been a few moments since we were together, yet I feel like it has been a lifetime? I never wanted to live most of my adulthood apart from him. I so desperately longed to grow old together. He was my soulmate. He was the one who “got me.” He was always on my side, always loving my unconditionally. He esteemed me so highly and cherished me and I did him as well. I miss him and I don’t think I will ever miss him less, …no never.
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