Monday, June 16, 2008

A Friend's tribute to his late wife

An atheist friend of mine lost his wife of 33 years recently. The following tribute is his beautiful response:

When someone has sweetened your existence with a strong “sense of life,” transforming every dark and shaded place around you to warmth, even the grief one feels in the hours of separation appears out-of-place in the brightness of her after-glow. It is easy to see her mark upon the Earth, etched forever in the hearts and minds of those that she loved and those that couldn't help but love her, too.

When a life-thread so vibrant is unexpectedly snapped, this awful circumstance comes upon us like a dark cloud; for some time we feel we cannot find our way without her guidance. Look carefully and you will still see a trail lined with candles that she left for each of us, to help us find the path to joy, to take up those candles, to light them and to share them with another person trying to find their way through life.

2 comments:

Exploringinside said...

She was my feminine side. Whenever she is strong and restless within me, I get the urge to adjust my bra and shave my legs; the feeling lingers but eventually passes, until the next time.

Exploringinside said...

One of Linda's favorite Christmas presents was a pair of Duck Slippers; she got so fond of wearing them, she wore them shopping, around the neighborhood, and hardly ever took them off. In Seattle it rains so often that her duck slippers were constantly wet and she was beginning to wear holes in the bottom of them within the first few weeks of wearing them; I can rember hearing her declare, "This just won't do at all!" She thought of a perfect solution to the problem; she took the slippers to a shoe repair store and had them mount the slippers on rubber shoe soles. The "soled" Duck Slippers [she had named Huey and Louie] lasted another year with their rubber soles, and worn to every event and location. Asked if she sould part with her Duck Slippers she said "Yes, it's time to move on up to Bear Slippers.