I remember the morning in 2000 when the crimson sunrise was filled with the voices of my family, but not John's. Silently and without warning, death had carried my husband away in the night. I remember my sister, Mary, and her husband, Al, standing in the dining room. Mary trying to get me to stop crying as she urged me to eat my yogurt. I choked each spoonful down hoping it would make the pain go away. Standing by the kitchen counter, Al paged through the yellow pages of the local phone book searching for a funeral home to call. I hadn't planned on death arriving so soon and unexpected. I had no plans for the end, yet the process seemed to fall into a natural rhythm.
A few hours later, my brother, sister and I crawled into the car and Al drove us to the mortuary. I remember the sun beating down on the car. I sat numb in the front seat smothered in a fog of loss. I wondered why Al was driving and not my husband, John. Death took a long time to sink in and when it did it crushed me.
The pain of loss is like the contrail a jet leaves in the wake of the deep blue sky. The white trail's sharp and solid at first, then slowly fades away. Like the contrail, grief softens over time, but the loss will always be a part of you. A new life evolves and you carry the memories with you.
Read more of my grief journey in my book, Twenty-Eight Snow Angels A Widow's Story of Love, Loss and Renewal. Available in ebook and paperback at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003FHMAUS A portion of the sales donated to the American Widow Project.
