Dear Larry:
I am sure that most people think that I am a bit nuts when I say that you speak to me. You have sent me messages, not symbols, but words on several occasions since you went to heaven. When you speak to me, I know that you have a very significant thing that you want me to know and that it is intended for me to shift my life. Your last message to me was about three weeks ago and I am still reeling at your words, the meaning and what I am supposed to do with this.
Many of your clothing items that meant something special to you are still in the same hall closet. Your 509th jacket. Your marathon tee shirts. Your LSU and Arkansas State game day apparel. I opened the closet to put a stack of clean shirts in and you took that moment to speak to me. You said, “I have to release you” and my knees buckled as I screamed, “NO!”. That was all you said. From that day until now, you have not even come to me in a dream, and I am profoundly shaken. I feel unstable and ungrounded without your visits and, at least in a dream, the opportunity to touch you.
I wrote about this before and still wonder if I am keeping you tethered to earth and to me and postponing your opportunity to become the angel you are intended to be. Does my constant conversation with you keep you stuck? Is it selfish of me to expect that we would continue the same relationship in spite of the fact that your world is completely different? Does the phrase “Till Death do us Part” now apply? Do you want out? You kept your promise to me on earth and now have the rules changed? As usual, I have a million questions and possible scenarios and absolutely zero solutions. Living is the question is getting exhausting because there never seems to be an answers available.
Here is what I choose to believe and how I want to interpret your message. It is typical YOU and exactly how you would have handled this had you been on earth next to me and holding my hand. I know in my soul what your intentions would be.
You said that to attempt to free me, not you. I believe that you are trying to but a bomb under me so that I realize that I have to find a way to live and breathe again because I am still on earth. You were slapping me into the reality that you are in fact not here and you are not coming back. I, however, am and have chosen (with very little power to control it) to live in the fog of grief for nearly three and a half years and this was your attempt to help lead me out of the fog. Even if this broke your heart, you would have endured that if you believed that it would at least put my feet on the path to living again. I know you too well. You did it for me and not for you. That was what you did and what was who you were,
So now, what do I do with this? The past three and a half years have designed perfect excuses for me to climb into a hole and stay there. Covid has been the convenient excuse to avoid any and all social interactions as it was far less uncomfortable to stay in our sunroom than to expose myself so that people can actually see that I am still fragile. If I burst into tears in our house alone, it is much less embarrassing than in a restaurant with other people. I am out of practice and less motivated to go out and practice now that I have to do that alone. It feels unnatural. It feels like I am living outside of my own skin. You are not standing next to me.
Every night as I lay in our bed alone, my last words for that day are to you. Now my last thought for that evening is a prayer to you to come to me in a dream so that I know that you have not really released me.
Regardless, I am forever
Your loving wife
P