I Don't Know It Yet

I don't know it yet but I just kissed you goodbye for the last time. The path of our life together ended in a heartbeat.  Tomorrow's memories, snuggled in the comfort of my mind, will never come to fruition. I can't see them but they are dissolving like sand in the waves of destiny.

Watching you walk away, I think about the million things I have to do before you return. I will look back on this moment and wonder which one of them seemed so important, that I didn't stand outside and wave goodbye as you drove away, into a future neither of us ever imagined possible.

Death is like invisible ink on the blank paper of each day. Stare at its message every day and see nothing, until suddenly the words take shape on the page and bells toll in the distance. You will hear them and not ask, and it will be over before I can even part my lips in protest.

I don't know it yet, but I'm about to find out who my friends are. Cards and letters will flood my mailbox and Hallmark will get the chance to say it one more time, much better than you could. Flowers will decorate my living room, displaying their beauty in a glorious cascade of color, until they fade and wilt. Severed from the nourishment of their life-giving plant, they cannot survive. I will stare at them for weeks, dead in their vases, before I throw them away and weep to think of how innocent they seem.

Strangers will tell me how sorry they are for my loss, and then walk away into their own lives, never knowing how much you meant to me or that I don't think I can go on without you.

About a million or so times, I will wish I had found a reason to keep you home today.  Even if I couldn't change destiny, holding you for one more day would have been a precious gift to treasure. I will cry until I have no tears and wonder if I'm capable of surviving the numbness creeping across my broken heart.

My entire world just ended. I will survive because God's loving arms will hold me up, when I can't bear to stand alone and His comfort will sustain me through this terrible trial.  I just don't know it yet.