Tick tock, tick tock, time is passing. In one sense that’s good. My widow friends tell me time will be a healing instrument. Today I view it as my enemy, because it’s dragging me away from the living, breathing Nate. Many times every day I yearn to look back, because when I do, there’s a holding on to him for a bit longer.
At the moment of death one month ago, Nate and I were physically touching. I sat close as those wispy last breaths moved from his mouth into the room and then dissipated. While the kids and I looked back and forth from his face to his chest searching for any tiny movement that might indicate he was still living, I continued to stroke his arm and hold his hand. His skin slowly grew cold and his fingers became stiff in mine as death shouted, “I won! I took him!”
I stayed in literal touch with Nate’s body for a few more minutes, even though I knew it was foolish. He couldn’t feel my tender caresses. We’d all known death was close and saw it hovering at the edges of his face, ready to pounce. But until it actually did, he was still a present husband and father. He was still ours. Once he died, he belonged not to us but to eternity. And to Christ.
When Nate was living a human life like the rest of us still are, he belonged to Christ then, too, but we somehow shared him. After he died, we no longer had our share. He was only ours in used-to-be. This was definitely second best, but I’ve tried to remind myself today, on the one month anniversary, that second best is still high on the list.
One big blessing is our many happy memories and 196 photo albums that prove them true. My sister and I have said, “Looking at the old photos, you’d think life was nothing but parties and vacations.” Of course we know better. Neither of us took pictures of children having temper tantrums in the store or doctors sewing stitches in the emergency room. Our recollections of Nate are much like the photo albums. Gradually memories of stress, failure or disappointment, even just ordinary moments, will fade like old photographs left in the sun. Even now, during the first month, we talk only of the positives.
In one sense, wicked death did have its way and “took him” on that November evening. But the full truth is that death was merely the gateway into a different (and much better) life. Does a resident of heaven make new memories? If he does, then we’re not part of them. Maybe, because heavenly living is out of time and space, we’ll be able to fit into those memories when we get there, as if we’d always been there, too.
In the mean time, our selective memory of Nate’s past is protective and caring, and we’ll try to keep him from moving from humanity to near-divinity. Could memories of our regular husband and father morph into something akin to perfection? I hope not. I long to remember the real man, not a fictional version. Of course it’s good to be positive, but we also know God uses the hard stuff of life, the stuff not in the photo albums, the stuff we shy away from remembering, to produce what’s best and most valuable in every life. So if we find ourselves remembering any bad days, that’s good, too!
“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10)
