I'm having a lot of trouble this season. 6 years gone.

[lostnfound]

3. A few thoughts

In the life of our spirits, the inner lives that constitute who we are so much more than our bodies, I think the people we love are still with us. When my mother died, I connected the hole in my heart with gratitude. The pain i felt meant that I had been blessed by having had her in my life. I embraced the ache as a tribute to what a great woman she had been, and I had an image that she was with me all the time, carried around in miniature form in my heart.

The hole in your heart that doesn't heal is a thing of pride. It's a sign that he iis far from forgotten, and a tribute to your loving marriage as sure as the roses that Joe DiMaggio left on Marilyn's grave. None of us want to be forgotten, your husband isn't. But if he's with you, carried around in your heart, maybe you could make a new ritual of "taking him somewhere special" every year, and let yourself feel like you are giving him a kind of gift. Find an early morning pond, or a sunrise, or a walk in the woods, and let yourself share the experience with him. Or before you face the half-loneliness that comes from being around people who may be relations or friends but who don't really know our hearts, have a little conversation with the Man in your Heart -- about who you'll be seeing today that might need your attention the most, about how you'll make it through the day. Or write a little poem to him, on those holidays, or do an act of kindness or charity in his honor. The holidays are busy, we spend time with the living, but it's okay to take an hour to be alone with our own thoughts, to be reflective and reconnect with the spirit of the one we loved most. We can't hear them with our ears, but we hear them in our hearts.