Death is not the end of love

When I was in my musically formative years, there was a group called Bread and they had a song called Everything I Own. It struck me then and still does now...the longing, the love, the gratitude. According to the book 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, David Gates wrote the song  after his father's funeral, to honor him.

Today I was listening to reggae music while looking at our honeymoon pictures and the song came on, sung by Ken Boothe.

"I would give everything I own, just to have you back again."

This may seem obvious, but for some reason it took almost two years to hit me. On New Years Day, I had a melt down. I can only now write about it...maybe. For some reason, the beginning of a new year triggered in me the complete and profound understanding that my life will never, ever, be the same.

Life will never be the same. There is no going back. Ever. Never. 

It's not that I was in denial, like Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking.

...I knew I was in no way prepared to accept this news as final: there was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible...I needed to be alone so he could come back.

It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred...

For most of the first year after her husband, John Gregory Dunne, died, Didion thought at some level, he would come back. Unlike her, I never woke up and thought Jim was just "out of town." I knew Jim was dead and would never physically return. However, I do think I was in another form of denial. I'm not really sure my heart grasped that this new reality was forever. Life would never, ever go back to what it was like when I was with Jim.

I know each moment is unique and will never be the same. But there was something oh so comforting in the knowing-ness of our love and life together. 

I would give everything I own, but I can't. 

So I have to find a way to get along with this new normal... Life will never be the same. But I won't always be so consumed by grief. I know this to be true. Life will never be the same, but it can be good, maybe even great, just different. 

A. Powell Davies wrote, "Let us be honest with death. Let us not pretend that it is less than it is. It is separation. It is sorrow. It is grief. But let us neither pretend that death is more than it is. It is not annihilation. As long as memory endures, his influence will be felt. It is not an end to love—humanity’s need for love from each of us is boundless. It is not an end to joy and laughter—nothing would less honor one so vibrant than to make our lives drab in counterfeit respect!"

You sheltered me from harm

Kept me warm, kept me warm

You gave my life to me

Set me free, set me free

The finest years I ever knew

Were all the years I had with you

Is there someone you know

You're loving them so

But taking them all for granted

You may lose them one day

Someone takes them away

And they don't hear the words you long to say

I would give anything I own

Give up my life, my heart, my home

I would give everything I own

Just to have you back again

Just to touch you once again