Upon further reflection, despite my grief over the loss of my wife’s companionship, I am beginning to appreciate that it was God’s gracious gift for her to precede me in passing on to glory. During the last few years, since the injuries she sustained in a fall in January 2013 and a subsequent fall in November 2015, both of which required trips to the hospital emergency room and admission to the hospital, followed by long and painful rehabilitations and a slow healing process, she had grown increasingly dependent on my assistance. She regained most of her mobility after the first fall, including progressing from a wheelchair to a walker and then to walking on her own, as well as being able to drive her car. After the second fall, although she again progressed remarkably in her mobility, her eyesight was degrading due to an unrelated condition, so she did not feel safe in driving her car and was less confident in her sense of balance when walking.

As a consequence, I began to drive her everywhere she needed to go and to hold her hand whenever she walked anywhere outside of our home. I became her almost constant companion and helper to the point of doing the laundry, the grocery shopping and preparing meals or securing takeout to bring home. Then, by the time we had endured the hassle of preparing our house for sale, packing, moving into a senior living facility and unpacking, her health had deteriorated to the point she once again needed a wheelchair. This provided her with sufficient mobility around the apartment, but I was needed to assist when we went anywhere else.

Finally, when she was hospitalized for the last time I was able to be with her every day up until the day she passed away. Despite my sorrow in being left alone after 54 years of experiencing life together with Mary, I now realize what a blessing it was for her to precede me. I am feeling lonelier than ever before, but I am glad that I did not leave her alone to fend for herself in the last days of her mortal life. I was able to be with her and see to her needs until she did not need me to anymore.

What a gracious gift from God that was. And I know that his grace will sustain me throughout the remainder of my life also. Praise the Lord!

Let’s face it; the grief that I continue to experience due to my wife’s passing is essentially self-pity over my being left behind. The more I reflect on the last few days of Mary’s mortal life the more I realize she was more than ready to move on to her home in glory. She had struggled with illness and injuries for most of her life, beginning in her teenage years and continuing on a regular basis for all of the years we were together. In addition she had fought  prejudice against her as a professional woman with a family from both religious and secular quarters. She felt there were few people who truly understood her strong desires for both career and motherhood.

In spite of this, she lived a long, full and richly rewarding life, filled with many singular achievements. In the end I believe she felt she had accomplished her purpose here on earth and had completed the work God had prepared for her. She had retired from her academic career in 2007, been increasingly involved in activities at our church and had just a few items remaining on her “bucket list’. These included seeing our Spiritual Entrepreneurship book published at long last in September of last year, followed that same month by our moving from our home of 33 years to an active senior living facility in close proximity to our daughter’s family. Then we closed on the sale of our home on November 21 of last year. She passed away exactly one month later on December 21. Job accomplished, work completed.

That she was ready to go home was evidenced by her statement to the doctors five days after her admission to the hospital yet once again that she “was ready to meet her Maker”.  That same day the doctors concluded they had done all they could for her and recommended we consider hospice care. Then I realized she was not only ready, but eager, to move on when she woke up on her last day in the hospital. looked at me and asked, “Why am I still here?” And finally, on the day after we moved her to the hospice facility she passed away very quietly and peacefully. She was there one minute and the next minute she was gone. What a way to go!

So when I reflect on her passing I thank God not only for a life well lived, but also for the ease of her transition to her eternal home. And I thank him for the privilege I had of knowing her and sharing in her journey of life for so many years.

And I am also beginning to realize the blessings God has in store for me now. I am able to participate more freely in the lives of our daughter and her family. I am living in close proximity to their home (it is only a 10 minute drive from my apartment), and I can attend more of our grandsons’ athletic events (which had become quite difficult for us as Mary’s health declined). She was remorseful about our inability to participate more fully in their lives, but now I feel her presence with me as I see them and feel that in some way I am helping to fulfill her heartfelt desire to be with them.

These new lessons learned are bringing great comfort to me and giving me a renewed sense of optimism about the future. I eagerly await even more lessons to be learned.

I am beginning to learn that life goes on following the loss of a spouse. It will never be the same as it was, of course.  But being different does not necessarily mean worse. And I am finding new avenues to share the life lessons Mary and I learned during our 54-plus years together. Each new experience, including becoming a widower, provides another addition to the lode of experiential knowledge I have accumulated during my life, and opens up the way to another group (in this case, widowers) with whom I can share a common experience. Realizing this, I have come to welcome each new experience I encounter (whether good or  bad on the surface) as yet another opportunity to identify with others on a level that cannot be reached by anyone who has not had that same of similar experience. And so I am learning to thank God always for all things.

And then, upon further reflection, as I look back on my life with Mary I realize that without her companionship, support and, yes, her critique and challenges to me, I would never have had the success in life I have enjoyed. And I believe the reverse is also true for her. As the scripture says;

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17 NIV)

Although I didn’t always appreciate it at the time, I gradually came to realize the value in seeing things from a different (in this case feminine) perspective. All of the major decisions we made were joint decisions, arrived at after much discussion and prayer. And, in the final analysis, they proved to be good decisions, although some of them turned out much different than we had anticipated. Marriage, we discovered, is meant to be a venture shared by two equal partners.

After Mary passed away I wondered how I would be able to fill my time now that I no longer had an ever-expanding “honey do” list. But I am finding that my calendar continues to fill up with new, and often unexpected, opportunities each week. The challenge for me is to identify the best choice among the many good things I could do. I find this is driving me to spend more time in prayer, seeking God’s guidance each and every day. Not necessarily being on my knees for prolonged periods, but cultivating a more constant awareness of God’s presence with me and listening more intently to what he is whispering to me all day long. And the results have been very rewarding. I am experiencing a renewed zest for life and all that it brings with it, and looking forward hopefully and expectantly to even better things in the future.

Hallelujah! What a great time to be alive!

On December 21, 2017 my beautiful wife, the love of my life and my constant companion for over 54 years, passed away. God, how I miss her! I deeply grieve over her loss. And yet, it is my loss of her companionship that I grieve, for she has gained the heavenly realm by her passing. Hers is all gain and not loss. Nevertheless, I grieve.

However, when I honestly reflect on her passing,  I realize that I have gained an understanding of several things that I never had before. First of all, I have a deep and abiding sense of peace. I shouldn’t really say that I understand it, because it is a peace that passes understanding. Let’s just say that I have experienced it, so I know that it is real. It comes, I believe, when I focus on the realization that, after many years of struggle with a host of illnesses and accidents, Mary is no longer suffering any pain. She is in a place where sorrow and suffering have passed away, and she is enjoying face to face fellowship with Jesus, her Lord and Savior – something that I look forward to myself one day in the not too distant future. So I rejoice with her over that.

Then, there is this. I was in somewhat of a state of shock when Mary passed away. Not that it was that unexpected. She had been diagnosed with an incurable and terminal liver disease in 1990 and told that she had only a few years to live without a liver transplant. Although she was on the waiting list for a transplant for over 17 years, she never received one. She lived for over 27 years after the diagnosis, continually confounding her doctors. Nevertheless we knew the day would come when the doctors had done everything they could, and it finally did. My shock was that many years ago, the Lord had told us that he had work for both of us and told me that I would have a long and sometimes difficult journey, and that no one would go all the way with me but my wife. So, why was I still here after she passed away? Was my journey soon to be over also. Then I realized that she was still with me, not by my side, but in my heart. Wherever I go now, and for however long, she will be with me to the end, as will Jesus.

In pondering this, I came to understand a statement Jesus made that I had never been able to comprehend before. He said, “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” How could that be? Shortly before Mary passed away, he had said to me, “She will live.” I had taken that to mean that she would recover from her hospitalization yet once more. But what he meant was that she would not die, but merely pass from this mortal existence into an immortal one. And she would receive an immortal body to replace the worn and tattered one she was leaving behind. This, too, added to my sense of joy and peace.

There will undoubtedly be many more lessons for me to learn as I travel onward with the Lord, and I will do my best to share them as they occur.