A good friend has sent me the four book series from the Stephen Ministry entitled Journeying Through Grief over this past year. I received the last book a few days before flying to Scottsdale for Christmas. The title of the book is the title of this post. The books are quick reads, but I did not have time to read it and prepare for the trip; so, I took it with me and read it while waiting for my plane
Book four talks about something that anyone who has lost someone that made them whole and now feels that a part is missing instinctively knows but does not realize - you have lost the physical person, but the relationship continues, just in a different form.
Irene and I will always be together. Little pieces of her are scattered all over the world, and I encounter them at unexpected times and in unexpected places. I walked into the guest bathroom in Scottsdale, and the Southwest style cow skull stained glass night light that Irene made as a gift was there. I had forgotten about it.
So, as this Christmas approaches, we will celebrate it together - just in a different way. A part of a poem by Henry Scott Holland entitled "What is Death?" was quoted in the last of the Stephen Ministry books, and I will end this rambling with that quote.
"I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other, that we still are."
Merry Christmas Irene.
