The human experience is a pretty mystical one. Try as we might to look at it all as the conglomeration of atoms that science tells us it is, our colorful imaginations paint its landscape in rich spiritual texture that far outrivals the real. That speaks to us at levels negotiated only by the heart. We thrill in the intangibles: love, coincidence, karma, and the one thing that enables us to feel not so infinitesimal, the idea that each of us has some special and unique purpose in the world.

This is what has made it so difficult, I think, for me to reach real peace with the passing of the one most true love that I have known. The violent and willful nature of his exit in spite of the love we shared, in spite of all the blessings he knew, defies all the possibility that faith once made available to me. I wasn’t special enough for him to want to stay and live. I wasn’t powerful enough to find a way to inspire his spiritual intents. I couldn’t find a way to pull off the one thing that would ever have really mattered.

Is it the holidays making me melancholy? Maybe. I had a really great visit, with family members that I genuinely love and who genuinely love me. Nieces who adore me. Cousins with whom I’m thick as thieves. I’m truly blessed. But maybe the contrast of all that sharing of joy and love just reminds my heart of how few cylinders it’s running on without the love of my husband, because at seven years hence there’s a moment that can still come for me, in the still of an evening, flooding me with tears like I’m just getting the news all over again. I really don’t know when I’ll ever be over that news.

He was just such a remarkable human being. The kindest, most gentle person I have ever known. It all pales, in comparisons I don’t intend to make but which can’t help but be wholly apparent to me. I’d give it all up for one more hour.

I think they’re necessary though, these occasional floods. Because of the preponderance of grief that loss has left me with, I have to work pretty hard at not overburdening others with it, so it only makes sense that the energy would have to be released every so often. Tears are the release valves that can allow hearts broken to live, even in their altered states.