Finality

I wasn’t going to write again on Tricia’s passing, but the events of the day have again turned my thoughts to the grieving process. As I awoke this morning, before I had completely come to full consciousness, I looked over to see if I was going to be able to start moving around without awakening her. Of course I quickly realized she wasn’t there.

Part of my day’s activities involved sorting through possessions in preparation for moving out by the end of the month. At one time I came upon a box of antique quilts that she was particularly fond of and quite indignant with me for misplacing when I moved it here. Funny it was within three feet of her the entire time she was here, I just didn’t remember that I had put it there. So of course I got excited and my immediate reaction was, I can’t wait to tell her I found the quilts! And there were a couple more incidents like that where I came across or had a thought or got a call from someone and my immediate thought was, I can’t wait to tell her.

Some friends had me over for dinner this afternoon and when I returned I discovered packages delivered by UPS on the doorstep. It only took me a fraction of a second to ascertain what the packages were. A couple of weeks ago she spent at least an hour on Amazon, combing the listings for some of our favorite movies. In her wheelchair bound state, watching movies was about the only shared activity we had left that we could enjoy together, and movie time was our favorite time of day. It was with great sadness that I opened the packages to find a couple of our favorite John Candy movies, some wildlife documentaries, a season of the old TV show Rawhide that she loved, and a book she had been trying to find for a long time, the “Cancer Battle Plan”. The packages unfortunately arrived well past their projected delivery dates and ultimately, too late.

That’s when the terrible finality of what has happened really began to sink in. She wasn’t ready to die, she wanted to go on fighting, to glean every bit of life from her time of earth that she was able to experience. But there are things left undone, unseen and unheard. In this mortal life I will never again be able to tell her of the little victories like finding the quilts again. I will never see her in the morning, and we will never have movie nights again. Fortunately final in this mortal world is not final. I know her salvation is secure as we experienced it together on our knees at the altar. The bible says life is but a vapor, but I intend to live the remainder of my years on earth to the fullest and I know that time flies and I will see her again in the next life. So final isn’t that final after all.