Romantic. Fool for Love. Intense. Romeo.
My friends (and myself) have taken me to task for how I love. Sage advice, patient nurturing, and loving mockery have been at my doorstep since I chose to end an intense and public love affair.
I’ve experienced romantic love twice in the nearly two years since I lost my wife. It seems I have two modes of dating: one and done, or falling in love.
I live with all my heart. Parenting, soccer, yoga, even blogging isn’t fulfilling until it pushes me to tears. That’s where I like to get, that place of danger, the place where possibility blooms like a sunrise out of a winter morning.
Widowhood didn’t create this, as my high school sweetheart recently reminded me, it moved the bar. The love that Mary left me is greater than any I have ever known, the pain nearly equal. Living in these extremes has stripped away much of the middle. So comes the high-wire act. The joy and jeopardy of dancing between the fringes of existence. Worse than tripping back into the pain is floating off the wire into space, drifting without course.
My heart doesn’t break. It grows to the size of its pot. Then it continues to grow. The beauty is obvious as leaves and blooms spill out over the sides. The pain comes as the roots push silently against the hardened clay, struggling for room. The pot breaks and the pain is exposed and ugly. Relief is there too. I am reminded that love is infinite. I am reminded of God’s love that Mary opened a window to on the day she left this realm. I am reminded that there is always a bigger pot, that I can mold one on my own, and that it’s okay to crave a partner in that process.
God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason