We have been on many an adventure over the last 25 years together. Sometimes we won and sometimes we lost. I can remember several times in the last few years when our business wasn’t working out in the location that we found ourselves in and we had to scramble to get out. It isn’t easy to move an entire antiques store with all it’s inventory and usually we were up until two or four o’clock cleaning and carrying out the last few items in order to meet the deadline for getting our deposit back. Three times I remember toiling for 24 straight hours. She was an expert packer and I just carried boxes… as fast I I could carry them and load them in the truck she could pack them. It was hard work but it didn’t matter, we still had each other, we still had our strength and we still had the will to go on. Often we were already planning our next big shot and we whiled away the hours discussing our plans as we cleaned up the current big attempt at success.
This time is different. The work cleaning up is just as hard, harder since I don’t have my steadfast optimistic partner. This time there is no one to talk to, no plans for the future to discuss, no big shot to look forward to. We were so excited to get this cabin in the mountains, now every sound echos through the hollow rooms as a reminder to the gigantic empty hole in my soul left there by her loss. I am so tired and I don’t want to be doing this. Without her at my side and without plans for the future there seems to be no point.
There is one verse in the bible, a vague hope that I can cling to from the book of Ezekiel, “I will settle up your estates and do better for you than I did at your beginnings.”. As I watch 25 years of my life go down the drain it is hard to believe that, but with God all things are possible.
