You love the first bittersweet sips of dark French Roast coffee in the morning. You think there is nothing better, that of everything you might be able to live without, this cup of coffee to greet the day is not one of them. You are startled another morning by a momentary feeling of delight, bursting into consciousness on the walk you’ve taken in your neighborhood at least a hundred times. If you had to explain what ignited this sensation, you would need a moment to think and look around. It’s been two years since you lost your husband, and you still find it impossible to believe he is gone.

Most people assume a wound such as yours heals in time. They think this because they’ve never lost something so precious. It’s also true that few wish to contemplate death and the sorrow we can’t end but somehow must endure.

Before you lost the love of your life, you knew you would grieve forever. In fact, that’s what you told your husband in his last months, when the two of you finally faced what might lie beyond the end of the road you’d loved travelling together.

Waking each morning to a deep silence the house seems to exhale, you grow more accustomed to riding down that road alone. For the longest time, you assumed you’d be old beyond imagining together. Only you will age past this point, a solemn and scary realization you’d never prepared for and now must.

A friend who recently lost her life partner confessed she no longer knew who she was. She struggled to explain, but you knew exactly what she meant. Without this man who loved her more than words could convey, the mirror in which she’d seen herself for decades had vanished.

You are grateful for moments when joy seeps in, for no other reason than that the sky is surprisingly blue, and you are, at this moment, not feeling sad. And you think yes, the days will continue to go on, while you balance life and death in your hands.

Everyone assumes the grieving has passed. The story is different, though, for you. Some days you feel his absence, as if he has just left the room. 

Though you sometimes experience moments of happiness, like a ray of sunshine tearing open a hole in the clouds, you also accept that a certain sorrow will stay with you, probably the rest of your life. You recognize that here in America, that might sound like surrender. We are not a people allowed to be sad. Grief has its place and a reasonable duration, but then it’s both healthy and wise to move on.

You would argue that you are a lover of stories. After decades creating the best story of your life, you aren’t yet ready to lay it aside. Nevertheless, you begin trying to write a story of how you plan to go on, while holding onto that favorite tale, the one about those splendid years you loved.

As you promised in his final days, you scattered his ashes on the beautiful Island of Kauai. Some mornings, you imagine him riding the waves offshore, remembering when you floated there beside him, holding his hand. The scene is one that runs through your mind, when you’re wondering what has happened to him and if he can hear the words you whisper in a direction you like to imagine he has gone.

Your therapist once described grief being like sea glass. At first, the edges of the glass are sharp. If you run your fingers along the side, the pain will be severe and startling. Over time, though, the ocean will work its magic, the edges becoming smooth and softening.

Time has passed, and you no longer expect the sea to soften the ache in your heart. It is, as one widow friend noted, the price we pay for having a great love. It isn’t what the marriage vows promise, only until death do us part. 

For some loves, death isn’t a strong enough weapon to remove the deep yearnings of the heart. This is what you have come to learn. Even after all this time.