I read this online a couple of days ago.
The person I was before you took your last breath and the person I am now are two very different people. I died with you that day only I kept breathing and you didn’t.
I think the point is you can’t go back to where and who you were before someone passes. It can be a friend, a relative, a parent or a spouse. Death doesn’t differentiate.
For a long time when one of the kids asked how I was after Ruth died, my standard reply was “life’s different now”. After three years, it’s very different but I’ve received a lot of good along with the bad.
It was different too when I lost my best friend, Jim, my cousin Gene, both of my parents, but especially Ruth. I had more one on one time with her. We knew each other better than everyone. We didn’t always like what we knew, but we shared it just the same.
My sister, Jackie, gave me a book of poems about loss shortly after Ruth passed. I was reading it the other day and was struck by the final passage of a poem called The Last Time. It was written by Donna Ashworth.
There is one very troubling thing
with last times
they don’t announce when they are here
they do not warn you
there’s no fear
so treat each living minute
as a last time.
That’s good advice for all of us and then there’s this.
All good advice.