Anniversary letter

Alicia and I were married on the 30th. July 1966, ( as we always reminded people… the day the England soccer team won the World Cup!) Today is our 44th wedding anniversary, and this is my ‘anniversary letter’ to her.

Darling Alicia,
At the moment I need to keep reminding myself that you are still with me, even after 44 years, and after you have died. That your spirit, the person you really are, didn’t leave me that morning in the hospital but is still involved in every aspect of my life. As involved as you ever were when you were physically present in this world.
But you no longer exist only in this world. You exist in eternity as well, and thus your present reality is incomprehensibly greater than anything I can possibly imagine. What’s more… and I have to keep reminding myself of this also… in trying to ‘humanise’ you so that I can ‘see you’, I inevitably lose most of your present wonder and beauty. Now I will only see you as you really are when I too die. For the moment, its the following reflection that helps me to keep going.
‘If the Alicia I knew in this world was so wonderful… how much more wonderful is her present reality?’
Your perspective is different to mine because you are now part of the eternal mystery, a perspective I can only dimly perceive and share, but every memory I have of you is immeasurably enhanced by the Eternal Love present in that reality.
It’s when I think about the person you were; when I recall your enthusiasm, your willingness to assume the best in everyone and everything; when I remember your delight in even small and apparently insignificant things, your willingness to trust when others would doubt, and most of all when I recall your prayer life so full of faith and hope, I realise that, of the two of us, you are the best one to lead us both into eternity. Following behind, in your care. as I now am, I am spiritually far safer than I have ever been. Whatever happens Alicia… whatever I do stumbling along behind you,…..please don’t ever let go of my hand!
I believe you are now experiencing eternal love, an experience currently beyond my reach, but one that I long to share. Not just in order to be with you, but in order to share with you a love more intimate, and fulfilling, than we ever had before. Because that love is the Eternal Love we call ‘God’.
He is the only person with exclusive rights to another person because He wills each persons individual existence; and, while I realise that your Heaven will be different to mine because we are two different creations of His will, I also believe there will be no difficulty in us sharing our two heavens. I do not believe that God will forbid us to share either. In neither of our cases, does He have any cause to be a ‘jealous god!’
Alicia, I love you now even more than I did before you died because what I perceive to be your present reality, your spirit, has become my guiding ideal. A light leading me on through these shadows, these whispered intimations of real happiness. Through you I now have a stake in eternity I didn’t have before, and even though that stake is currently in the ‘now’, only dimly understood… it is in my heart for eternity,… an eternity of love we were both created to share….., but to share together.
Happy anniversary Alicia!