Michael
I was talking to Shawn last night and in the middle of our conversation I realized that I felt at ease in planning our vacation to Europe together. We talked about budgets and how much time we would spend in each country. I felt like a women planning a trip with her significant other rather than a widow who was making the first steps to a new life.   It is odd how this road of grief has turned into a road of adventure and self-discovery. A friend who has lost her husband years ago, had told me recently that to go on with one’s life is the most honorable way to remember the one that you had loved and lost.  She was right.
For the first time sense your passing, I understand how the love that I continue to feel for you is different than the love that I now feel for another man. They are incomparable. The love that I carry for you is contained deep inside of me in a place that is yours and mine alone. The love that I felt for you remains intense, burning at times, and as much of genetic makeup as if we shared the same DNA.   You continue to complete me.   What makes this new love so remarkable is the joy that is so distantly different. The joy that Shawn brings is a true gift from God and in some ways a gift from you as well. Shawn makes me laugh and his keen sense of humor and wit lightens the intense moods that I often feel. Shawn understands that my moments of unexplained silence are when I am immersed in the spiritual world that I now share with you.  Shawn respects the love that I share with you, and his remarkable intelligence knows there is no need for jealousy or a sense of uneasiness   Shawn too completes me.
Dear sweet husband, the life that I once knew has changed so dramatically. I have a new sense of adventure and independence it is some ways I have been reborn. To say that the life that I shared with you was not remarkable would be unthinkable. The life that we shared together was extraordinary and has shaped me into the strong women that was needed to walk a road of intense grief.  We raised beautiful children together, we grew both emotionally and spiritually together. Our marriage, our romance and our love affair was based on love and mutual respect, and blessed by the universe in its purest form.   I believe with all that I am that I have loved you through many lives and that in time I will love you through many more.
For now, for the remainder of this life, I will share my love with another and embark of adventures to which I have only dreamed. I will see the world through soulful dark brown eyes as opposed to brilliant sea green.  The man that now whispers my name does so in a Canadian accent , and holds my heart in hands that are smaller, but as gentle and comforting as yours were. I was talking to Shaun last night and I told him that I am ready to know love again. Shawn just laughed and through the other end of the phone I felt him smile.
I love you.
Me