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?
