Ian, I love the way you speak from the heart. Yes, we are always changing, even if we don’t realise it. Your declaration of love is wonderful and transcendent. No one knows what happens after we die, only what happens leading up to the point, when we have to relinquish everything here on earth. It is probable that your wife’s spirit is still supporting you and your family. Yes, you both did GREAT! Remember that lovely poem you created about your granddaughter and the joy she brought to you. I must look at it again.

Good stuff!

I believe we are constantly renewing or reinventing ourselves. It is a continuing process, a process of growth and choice. After a marriage of fifty-one years I lost my wife and found myself “of an age” then where I was all alone! A purposeless and reluctant “new age” man.

Yes, so many years had passed; when first we met I did not carry the scars and cares I now do, but was full of hope for a better and brighter future because I had found my soulmate. She was the purpose I had realised was missing from my life until then and that I had unconsciously been searching for. Then there she was … she completed me and filled me with love, comfort, devotion and fervour for the next fifty-three years and more
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Then I had a moment of clarification, a reinvention. There it was! My reason for living and the focus of my purpose … family … I couldn’t/can’t give up on everything as I have a loving family in which I have a definite role to play … the mutual giving, receiving and sharing of love, care, attention and responsibility.

Family always has been my purpose, but when my wife died I lost sight of this fact for a time. I couldn’t see a reason for continuing, blinded as I was with grief. I did things mechanically and as a matter of routine, but the love was still there. My “purpose” just took some time to reassert itself and for me to realise and appreciate. The family is now my focus and my reason for getting up each morning, putting one foot after the other and seeing the day’s activities done. They are my “purpose”.

I no longer feel bitter over my loss. I realise I haven’t lost her because I know where she is though I will never be with her again in this lifetime. I have the treasured memories and am so glad we had all that time together. I just have to look at our family to realise … we done good, girl, we done REAL good! Thanks for giving me my purpose.

Ian.