TALES FROM THE BOBBI LAMA

When it comes to grief, the lack of predictability is one of the hardest elements. As anyone who has lost a significant person in their life knows, the waves of sadness come and go with no regular pattern. Any thought at any time can spark a grief reaction and release the tears with almost no control. Even after a couple years after the transitioning of my husband, one of those moments happened the other day.

I was reading a book that addressed women’s lives and was in the section about loving relationships and marriage. The author was describing how we sometimes just expect too much from our spouses, especially after many years of marriage when there’s a tendency to measure the romance as so much less than during the honeymoon phase. Constant romance and attentiveness are simply not realistic with all the demands of life that fill our days. The author’s point was that we unfortunately tend to feel like something’s wrong, or we’re not lovable, or the spouse isn’t trying enough, when in fact it’s perfectly normal. We are only human after all.

With that in mind, I put the book down and was triggered to remember something I had said decades ago in an argument my husband and I had. Both of us were tired, and short, and expecting too much of the other guy. I wished I had been more patient or understanding or mature back then and was regretting it now. It brought me to tears, and I spoke to him in spirit. I said out loud that I wished I could apologize to him now and was so sad that he wasn’t there to hear me say I was sorry.

Precisely as I finished my last word, the lightbulb in the lamp that was on next to me flickered once, and hasn’t done it since. I felt immediately so reassured that he heard me! I was thrilled. (I honestly don’t know why his signs always surprise me with all I’ve received!) I thanked him over and over, and then came the flash in my mind of the metaphor about life being like a beach with the grains of sand each being only one moment in time. I felt it was him reminding me that that argument was only one grain of sand in our whole beautiful lifetime together, and to let it go.

I am so grateful for those flashes!