Went several days last week without tears, then came upon Rosie’s straw hat hanging by the front door. What is it about hats?? Went a couple of days more and came upon a pair of socks she’d worn while in Mexico and rubbed them on my cheek. I light a candle for her at night—I forget sometimes and feel guilty. I feel ok sometimes and feel guilty about that. I know Rosie would think me foolish.

So, that’s how it goes. But with stories I’m reading from C.S. Lewis, I am now considering bereavement as perhaps the next phase of married love, not the end or even truncation of it. Perhaps it follows marriage just as marriage follows courtship. If so, I will endeavor to do it well as I tried to do marriage well.

If God or the Spirits had any hand in this, then they are cruel masters who said, “Whoops, too much happiness here. We can’t have that.” Or perhaps they said to Rosie, “You have mastered the art of married love, and now it’s time for your next test. Well done.”

Malidoma has called it the “human oxymoron—why death where there is so much love?” I’ll be working on this for a long time.