Failure within and without...

Only 3 short months since my husband passed suddenly and outside the realm of reality or even expectation.  Where is he?  Is he really gone?  His truck is in the driveway.  His wedding clothes in my closet.  I pick up his shoes and just look at them...like he might suddenly pop up and out of them.  Where did they take him during the years of separation that followed 23 years together?  How lovely the wedding 36 days before his leaving!  

There lingers still the question of what I could have done...if only I'd known the danger signs to watch for.  Damn covid!  I needed to be there with him and learn all I could about why they could not find a way to help him control the pain that followed surgery.  Something happened then to  my groom.  

Regrets.  Worthless emotion; yet inevitably engrained in the weave of confusing stages of grief recovery.  We call them "if only."  We may be for a while stagnated...frozen in our confusion...but Regrets,...they just come and go as they please...nothing and no one in charge of them or able to capture each and toss to the trash.  This will subside.  Pass.  Retreat to the background.  I'll be stronger; more compassionate with others in their loss.

But Regret, mean and ugly...lying to one's inner self that something 'else' could have been had I not failed.  

But it is Regret who fails.  As I have learned the hard lessons of long life - that no one is to steal my joy.  That there was happiness in my life with him...brought into it's humbling state of 'perfection' by the 'full circle' experience of his death.  Regret doesn't understand the spirit of God's gift of JOY.  And I have joy.  And love.  And acceptance.  And encouragement.  And a son and daughter born into my heart in my 70's.  It is morning.

Weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning. (Ps 30:5)