I was talking with another widow the other day, and she told me that lately when she looks at the pictures on her wall of her and her late husband, it feels like it was someone else in those pictures. It feels like some other life, or another lifetime ago. She said she used to feel really sad when looking at the pictures, but now its more of an emptiness, and a big void. She stares at the picture, as if trying to feel something, but it just feels like nothing. And then THAT makes her sad. 

“I know that feeling,” I empathized. “It’s like you feel removed from that life. Like it wasnt you who was in it, or it’s somehow been detached from you.” 

“YES!!!! Exactly! Removed!!!”, she said in loud agreement. “Why do we feel removed from our own lives?”, she wondered. “That sucks!” 

It sure does suck, and I dont really know why we feel removed. Maybe its because after some time has passed, we start living life again, and sometimes the life we are living has little to no resemblance to the life we would have had if our person didnt die. Sometimes there are so many changes in our life since that loss, that it feels as if our life might be unrecognized by our person. And then that makes us very sad. We start to wonder what they would think of our life today, or the decisions we have made, the things we never saw coming but that had to be dealt with, the times our hearts and minds and courage have been tested. 

I believe that my husband would walk into my life today, if that was a thing he could do, take a look around, and be momentarily confused by my new career path as a Realtor, or the car my boyfriend will soon be gifting over to me to drive, or various other things he would look at and be baffled by. 

But he would know me. He would always know me, and who I am, and my soul and my heart, and he would walk in and say something like: 

“There you are. It took me a minute, but there you are. It’s great to see you.” 

I like to believe that he sees me everyday, in his own weird energy-flying around way. 

Id like to think he is aware of what Im doing, and maybe that he has even helped me to get here. 

But just in case none of that is true, I do feel very confident that even if everything around me looked totally different, 

he would always know who I am, because he will always be part of who I am. 

Love lives on.