Take My Hand

I am changed by the alertness of the reality that was once unknown to me. My body is awake and aware of knowledge that was once foreign ground.

Silence sits next to me as I long to reach out to take your solid hands that are now only a memory in my soul. I picture your hands, intertwined together with mine when I saw you for the last time on this earth. The same calloused hands that once held me tenderly and made me feel like the world was a place of wonder and not agony, rested so peacefully as I grasped them with all I had.

The same hands that 6 months before took mine and became husband and wife, ready for years of adventure and beauty, laid quietly folded on your pendelton that I had seen you wear a hundred times.

I remember taking your hands as your body rested there on that table. The quiet room was so still and void of life, or maybe that was my own self, my reality becoming confused with the actuality of the existence around me. My hands searched for yours that day, in that room, while you were quietly waiting for me. I knew you were waiting for me, you always were.

I felt it was magnetic, the pull that brought us together every day, and that day in particular as you waited for me in silence. It’s hard to explain to those around me, that unseen force of power that existed between our souls. Love. Love is what that is and love is what this life is all about. 

God is love. That sentence is powerful and worthy of our energy to understand it's meaning.

I walked into that room with hesitation, scared of death and scared of my reaction to the emotions that our culture doesn’t talk about. But, it was you, it was always you. Waiting for your lady, waiting for your love.  I took your solid, calloused hands that day and didn’t let go. If I held them long enough they stopped feeling cold. For some reason that's one of the things I remember most about that time with you, that I wanted your hands to feel warm again. To come back to life and touch my cheek as you had a million times over. Instead I touched yours, tenderly touching where your cheeks were pinked by the Grand Canyon sun. I thought about your time out there, on the river that you love. Gratitude for your time out there flowed from my soul like a river that cannot be stopped.

I sit here now and think about this time, this time that seems like a lifetime ago. I have changed. My normalcy is skewed from the enlightened knowledge that comes from experiencing what is real during this time on earth.

The short, powerful life of my husband inspires me to take the hands of those around me and change the world while we are here.

Curt's hands that accomplished so much during the time while he was here, provokes in me the courage to do the same. This journey continues, I am all in.

Love is what nourishes our existence- Paulo Coelho

Temporary Existence

Your voice lingers in my memories, these memories that are fading quietly into the distance. I desperately try to grab hold, clawing my way back to the times that made sense. Because, this time doesn’t make sense anymore, or, I have found, it makes perfect sense, depending on the way that you look at it.

You see, before you died I believed in this temporary existence more than I believed in the unseen realm that continues on forever. But, now that it is the time that exists after you are gone, this all just doesn’t make sense anymore. This temporary, tangible reality makes no sense to me. What makes more sense is that you are still here, just out of reach, listening to my voice and smiling at the way I move my mouth or give a sideways glance when I am nervous. You are still here and waiting until we all join you in eternity.

For, how can you have once been here, full of the most genuine, boyish, electric, charisma, and then in an instant, be gone forever?

Our temporary existence is lingering all around me. Examples reminding me that it is true, this is all a fleeting time, moments slowly evaporating like the fog that hovers over the river at dawn. So temporary that I struggle to understand if it is even really happening. And, if it is happening, where do these moments go after they are gone?

For, if I am not mistaken, my eyes see these moments take place and my heart fills with joy as they play out. Then, they are gone, evaporated into the flow of the river that separates the beginning from the end. Where does this temporary existence go? Are these moments still here, everywhere and nowhere all at once?

I think so. They must be. Because, those times, those precious moments that only you and I shared, make up the all encompassing love that radiated out of our skin. Skin that was so electric to our touch, full of so much life that there is no way it dies. Those moments that I can’t relive with another person while I am in this temporary existence, ache to be talked about, ache to be laughed about, and ache to be cried about. Anything but stuck in my head without hope of leaving my tongue.

And so I will do these things. Laugh and cry, live into the memories of our temporary existence because there is no other choice. I will do this alone until we are reunited and can do this together. I will also make new memories, full of life and wisdom that only comes from living into my reality. A reality that I didn’t ask for or predict, but a reality that is part of our story. This story that continues on with my eternal soul living in this temporary existence until it meets yours once again.