It is just hours from the four month mark.  I will not recognize the day of your death, but the day before when you were alive.  It is now 130 days since I saw your face and kissed you goodbye.  I still have very little grasp on the fact that I will not see your face ever again.  That I will forget the tiny freckles on your left cheekbone that I often kissed.  I can still see that spot before my eyes.  It’s almost as if I memorized it for this moment.

There will be another benefit concert in your honor Sunday night, but after thinking about it quite a bit and discussing with a friend, I realized I felt exhausted at the thought of traveling with Audrey, which means probably very little sleep for her or me because she doesn’t sleep well in other places- and another dose of reality.  The first concert I attended, though beautifully put together by Dan’s friends, was almost unbearable for me.  This one, will be in a place that was very special to Dan, and there will be friends there he grew up with that I would very much like to mourn with, but I just don’t think I can manage it.

Instead I will be quiet and still this weekend- I will rest from my words as well.

Reading tonight C.S. Lewis’ thoughts on Eros from his book “The Four Loves.” He speaks of the husband who loves his wife as Christ loved the Church- giving his life for her.  Though I don’t think our marriage was a crucifixion, it certainly wasn’t an easy one…but a tumultuous and passionate one- real and flawed and yet, growing.

“The headship [of the husband] then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is — in her own mere nature, less lovable.  For the Church has no beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely.  The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man’s marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness not acquiescence.  As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs.  He is a King Cophetua who after twenty years still hopes that the beggar-girl will one day learn to speak the truth and wash behind her ears.”

Thank you Dan.  Just as we hope God does for each of us, in your love, you made me lovely.

You always said that I loved beauty and pretty things.  And when I think of you- that is what I always find myself saying while I weep, “You were beautiful.”

Just as I wrote in that final email to you the night before you died: I am missing you very much tonight.

It is four months
and one day
since you lived on earth.