How do you mend a broken heart?

I met a woman recently. She was beautiful, in all ways – with the voice of an angel. But she was also sad, so terribly terribly sad.   Her husband had died just over a year before and she couldn’t stop talking about him. When she remembered him her eyes became soft and her voice lowered. Her hands touched the silver necklace she wore like a talisman.  Yes, he’d given it to her.

‘He was the love of my life,’ she said simply. ‘He was everything I ever wanted.  Everything I ever needed. We were just so…right, in every way, on every level.’ 

She told me that her friends were losing patience with her and telling her she should start dating, find somebody new.  ‘But how can I?’ she said. ‘How can I find someone to take his place?’

‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘You won’t. How could you?’ 

But then?  What do you say to someone in that position? How do you comfort them?  That time heals?  Does it?  Maybe it numbs. A little.

‘It’s just so cruel,’ she said. ‘So unfair. We didn’t have that long; we didn’t have long enough.’  

For some loves, there is never enough time. For some, there is no time at all.

When I told her that my last remaining work as a journalist is to write an agony aunt column for Natural Health magazine each month, she smiled. ‘Answer my question,’ she said. ‘Please.’ 

And so, today, on this bright beautiful sunny day, I am sitting here with a heavy heart.  Thinking about loss, about time, about separation, about broken hearts, about lost love.

What would you say to her?  What advice would you give?  How do you live with a broken heart?  How do you cope with the cruel vagaries of Life and Time?