Hold Fast

There was so much I wanted to tell you, Baby. When you woke up. How much I missed you. How I recovered. The way Katy and Dan sacrificed to get me off that mountain and down to their house once the hospital let me go, and how your brave daughter took care of me until my strength returned. I’m strong again, honey. I’m doing everything I did before, all these weeks since I told you goodbye in ICU and came off that mountain while you fought to survive. I made it, Babe.

But I never got to talk to you again. Not until the day we were finally allowed back in your room to tell you goodbye. There was too much to try to say that day while we choked up with tears and tried to be as courageous as you and let you go. When it was over, I put your wedding ring on my own hand, and I’ve been wearing it ever since.

Remember how you told me while you were stationed in Germany that you wanted a turquoise wedding band? And how I got a new diamond set for our twenty-fifth anniversary (“I want some bling now,” I told you.) But you wanted to keep wearing the ring I had special-made for you because it told the story of perseverance in hard times and devotion in good with its chipped stones and sparkling silver edges.

I put my bling away the day we let you go. Your turquoise band took its place on my ring finger. I need a reminder that I can persevere. That I can walk this painful path with courage and survive. It comforts me to see it there on my left hand—looking at it reminds me of how it looked when you wore it. Sometimes it even makes me feel like you’re still close by. There’s a triangular stone missing—the empty spot spins around to the front a lot—but I don’t mind. You loved this ring and wore it all the time. You were bound to lose a piece of it eventually. Every time I see that empty place it reminds me you’re the one who lost that stone and I’m the one who lost you. I don't think I’ll ever get it repaired.

I’ve lost so much. It’s so hard to grasp how much in such a short span of time that I can’t even comprehend it all right now. Of course, it bubbles up to the surface and flows down the sides of my face, so I can’t ignore it completely. Grief has a mind of its own.

When I think of that last day, sitting beside you in the hospital, I just did what I had to do. I wept there, but I knew that, as always, the majority of my tears would fall later when the shock gave way to whatever my new reality looked like. Every day since I kissed your forehead for the last time and told you I love you is heartache. I’m bleeding inside, missing you, longing for you. We didn’t know until the morning prior that you were going to die. I never knew what helpless felt like until that moment. The memory of you trying to say that you love me strangles me with grief. You were ripped away from me while I stood by in disbelief, unable to prevent it from happening. Stolen from me while I watched, powerless, unable to do anything to stop it. I’m still numb. This evening when I told our kids good night, I came to the bedroom, longing to tell you about my day. Desperate for a hug. I was sobbing before I crossed the threshold knowing you weren’t waiting for me.

How many ways can I think of to explain how this feels? Half of me is gone. Overnight. There was no closure, not when the conversation was one-sided. I don’t know what happened. There are no answers. And when I ask God to speak up, there’s only silence. Maybe you can see me from the other side. Hear my cries. One author I’m reading even says you and all the other saints are praying for us. For me. I hope so. It’s the silence on this end that is deafening. It makes me feel like my questions fall lifeless to the floor at my feet.

I wasn’t going to write tonight. It makes me cry and I can’t breathe and then I can’t go to sleep and I need sleep. It’s hard to go to bed without you. But there’s something in me that demands I work this out here, especially since I can’t talk to you about it anymore. You always made me laugh at my fears. You let my mascara melt on your shoulder while you held me in your arms. You brushed the hair out of my eyes and kissed the tears away and told me everything was going to be all right. But I can’t hear your voice anymore. It’s the worst kind of starvation. I’m trying to be brave, Baby, I really am. There’s nothing I can do to change the fact that you’re gone for the rest of my life here. But it hurts so much.

So here I am. Wearing your ring. Bearing your name. Holding fast to our daughter and son and their families. Forced to go on without you when I don’t want to. Wishing I could talk with you and writing unread letters to you instead.

Maybe you already know all of this, watching from the heavenly stadium where you sit with your dad and brothers and my Grandpa and all the others in that cloud of witnesses the Bible talks about. and pray for our endurance here, for our hope to stay strong, and that we’ll each ‘hold fast’. I’ll do my best, Baby. With my eyes closed, and these half-breaths, and the grief strangling my soul, I’ll try to remember how much you want me to hang on..

I just wish that I was still holding fast onto you.