Happily Ever After

Ten years ago today, I watched these two walk down the aisle to their happily ever after. Three months ago today, that happily ever after was ripped out from under them. And from all of us who loved Angie.

If you have traversed the landscape of grief, you know that these milestone days can be particularly trying. Two of them in one day is a lot to process. If you���re reading this and you���re the praying type, please pray for Keith.

As only God can orchestrate, the most mundane of tasks���clearing out 6,000+ emails in an old inbox dating back to 2010���was my salvation today. It was the perfect, mindless distraction for a teary day. I was ruthlessly deleting them by the hundreds until I came to the ones from Angie.

Every newly discovered message from her these days is too precious to discard. Each one like hearing her voice in my head, a moment of make believing that I can hit reply and she���ll get it. So I clicked on one. To my bafflement, it was her telling me how much she liked a blog post I���d written and how it would be great to get it published to comfort those who are grieving.

So in this otherworldly conversation that is bridging the gap between past and present, between earthly life and afterlife, she is telling me to go read my own words. She is telling me they will comfort me. I can���t imagine anything I���ve written would be enough to help. But I have to go read them because she���s telling me to. The post was written five long years ago and was no longer accessible on my site. I couldn���t even recall writing it. I searched my computer wondering if I���d archived it. Sure enough, I found more than two dozen old posts, anonymously titled ���blog archive��� and numbered one through twenty-five. I randomly clicked on number eleven, and that was it.

I had written it after a friend���s son was tragically killed. It was someone Angie and Keith knew well. It said all the things that I would say to someone in my shoes if I weren���t in these shoes. It reminded me that resuming life after something like this takes time. And that we expect our healing to come much sooner than it really does. Most importantly, though, it reminded me that we���re not alone in our grief, recounting a God who actually chose to come to earth and walk into pain instead of away from it.

What struck me even more that the words themselves was the connection I felt to Angie when I read them. Like she had somehow led me to them. I recreated that original post here with a bit of cutting and pasting.

And the happily ever after���what of that? She trailed it behind her as she moved through life. And she left us with so many reminders of her creativity and beauty. We see her most clearly when we look at Tate who���to those of us who knew her at six���could be her twin.

But I see her in so many other places too. In the set of washcloths she knitted for me (yep, hand-knitted washcloths!) that I use every single time I wash my face. In the lamp she made me for Christmas one year when she was a struggling young designer. I still read by it in the library most nights. In the art we found together that hangs in my yoga & writing room and inspires me during my home practice. And I could go on and on, as could all of us who love her. As probably any of you could about the loved ones you���ve lost.

She left an extraordinary amount of love in her wake. The best we can do these days is remember to notice it. To remember her by marveling at all she left behind. To trust that the real happily ever after in all our lives will come in a realm not of this world.