Where Do I Go with These Emotions?

I want my Lois!
I want my Snookie-Pie!
I want my baby!

We're exactly three weeks away from the first anniversary of Lois' death.
I was at Walgreens just now and on the house music system, I heard, “Only love can break a heart.”

I got a tear in my eye, choked up a little.

Yes, her love inhabited me for 25 years. She loved me completely, even when I was being a stupid jerk.

And now that she's gone, there's a gaping wound, a resounding emptiness in my soul.

Last year – about this very time – when Lois was in the hospice center and before I brought her home to finish out her days here in familiar surroundings, the very nice hospice doctor took me aside and asked, “And how are you doing?” I think she asked because I appeared pretty calm and peaceful.

I wasn't.

I told her, “I feel like I want to go somewhere and get away from this.”
She was so kind, so understanding. She said very sweetly, “Well that's certainly an option. But I think you might miss something very special if you did.”
She was right, of course, and I didn't.

But where am I supposed to go with all that's building up in me now? It's stuck in my throat. I've had laryngitis for two days. And it's nothing physical. No fever, no soreness.

All emotions.

Dear Lord, where am I supposed to go with this?

In the old days, I really would go away from the emotion. But now, I want to stay awake for this surgery. I want to feel it, taste it, touch it, inhabit it.

But it hurts so! When does this end? It's a fish hook in my heart. It's been nearly a year and the pain is raw again, like someone poked their finger into an old wound.
My friend Walt wrote me this afternoon.

“One thing you and I share is the knowledge that all our pain and grief only exists because the marriages we had were so strong and fulfilling and based on deep, abiding love on all the different levels, from the loftiest to the most animal.”
He's exactly right! He and I were blessed with very special marriages, very special women.

And that's all well and good. But what am I supposed to do with this feeling? I feel it in my chest. A weight. If happiness is a “lightness”, then this is a “heaviness”.
I am reminded of the old church hymn, “Take it to the Lord in prayer.”

I'm taking it to you, Lord!

Please take it away.

Lois went away but the love for her, the yearning for her, did not. We were together for over 9,000 days. Nine thousand memories. No, make that 100,000. No, more like a million. They flood over me, they cover me like an avalanche. They bury me. They cloak me.

They caress me, even now.