Neuer Gedankengang!

Für meinen Lebensgefährte

Wir waren fast 36 Jahre zusammen. Ich vermisse ihn sehr!

I love the German word Lebensgefährte/in! It is such a good description of the life of two people who choose each other and stay by that descision through good times and rough times, who build a life together and then share the fruits of their relationship with other people. We were partners in life, traveling the road together. We had come a long way in our years together and expected to travel many more roads! But he passed away on June 8, only six weeks after we learned that he had cancer.

The challenge for me now is to keep on without him, to build on what we had together, to honor him with the choices I make and the work that I do. I am challenged to treasure the memories of our life together without holding on to those memories so tightly that it keeps me stuck in this time or even this place. I am challenged also to treasure the way he drew out the best in me and continue to live as the kind of person I was with him beside me.

One way I will be able to do that, I know, is by continuing to treasure the people that we shared our life with, to keep in touch with people and involved instead of retreating to my own world. And another way is to keep on using the knowledge, the skills, the energy, that developed while I pursued my college education. He supported me in that with the expectation that the experience would be used in shaping my life after the degree was hanging on the wall.

And my degrees are hanging on the wall, right above a shelf full of just a small part of his kangaroo collection! :-) He put them there for me in February. From where I sit as I work, I can see them, and I can also see the road outside the window.

posted by Shirley Schuette @ 4:11 PM