Toi et moi, ça ne changera pas.

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about my newly bestowed title of "widow" and the more I have thought about it, the less I have liked the term. I also thought quite a bit about why Dave and I got married in the first place. It had more to do with commerce, taxation, property and other legal ramifications than it had to do with committing ourselves to each other. We did that long before we ever signed our names on a government document. We didn't need that piece of paper to tell us that we were bound together forever. That sounds a little hippyish but it is completely accurate and true. After we had been together for a while, it became annoying to have to pay separate taxes, insurance, etc.. It also occured to both of us that if anything (like illness or death) happened to either of us, the other one would have no legal right to have a say in things like treatment, funeral arrangements, etc. He told me he wanted a Viking funeral, should anything happen to him and we both knew his family would never understand that one. And so we got married.

Now that Dave is no longer physically here, the law has deemed me a widow and again I am being forced into something that I really don't believe in and certainly didn't ask to have thrust upon me. I was not Dave's chattel, I was his partner and his equal, something he reinforced to me often. I resent having society look at me like I am some sort of pariah just because the legal bindings between my husband and myself have been severed by his death. Yes, our legal contract has been terminated, but that is all that happened. We are no longer partners on paper. End of that story.

My relationship with Dave is not over, it has just changed. Granted it has changed in the most dramatic way possible but it still exists. I spent the last 16 years of my life living, breathing, loving a man who has died. His physical body is gone but he is still at the center of my every day. His influence affects most everything that I do. I still love him with all my heart. I know that he changed the world for the better just by being in it for the 50 years he was here. The fact that I am not physically able to touch him doesn't seem to be such a huge deal in the grand scheme of things (and the truth of that is a toss up because he was cremated and his ashes are sitting here with me even as I am typing this). No we can't hold each other or make love any longer but that happens to couples lots of times when both parties are still alive and kicking, so that doesn't mean a whole lot, either.

Of course, I am lonely and quite sad much of the time and I do cry over silly, sentimental things but that is mostly because I have a tender heart. I did love the physical man very, very much. He attracted me in ways that volumes of romantic literature have been written about. Just watching him walk - long legged, fluid and graceful as a cat- was so sensual it makes my heart beat faster just picturing it as I type this. Beautiful blue eyes that could pierce your soul and make you want to swoon from the intensity of them. Tender, gentle, ardent, sincere and generous as a lover. Oh, yes, I miss the physical man.

But the things that attracted me the most had nothing to do with his corporeal being. His mind, his spirit, his great heart, his honesty, his intelligence, his confidence, his devotion and spirituality, his courage and aplomb. So many things about this man that had nothing to do with his substance and everything to do with his transcendence. He was so much more than just a man. I knew it from the moment we met because our souls recognized each other immediately. It just took my sentient self a while to pay attention.

And so to trivialize the relationship I had with this incredible human being by marking me with a label as demeaning as widow infuriates me. I was worthy of the love of this man which makes me pretty damned special, too. I am not somebody to be cast aside in pity because I no longer have a man at my side. He was a seraphic being that graced this earth with his presence and he chose me to be his partner. He chose me to stand beside of him in everything he did from the day we first met forward. He loves me as fiercely, passionately and as grandly as I love him. Love never dies and I refuse to be cast into the shadows with the lonely and unloved because I was worthy of this man and he of me. And that is all that matters and all that ever mattered.

I remember something from the book "Flowers for Algernon" (and the movie "Charlie").The title character was transformed from a regular person into an astounding genius and he was asked to punctuate what looked like a bunch of jibberish on a blackboard. With a four punctuation marks he turned it into a profound and deep statement. The puzzle: That that is is that that is not is not The solution: "That that is, is. That that is not, is not." That has stuck with me for many years and it is something that speaks to me now. In my personal reality, "What exists, exists. What does not, does not."

And so I refuse the title "widow". I am still the Wife of David, Soul Mate Extraordinaire and Bestest-Bestest Friend. That has not changed in my world. I do not need a title to describe myself. I exist, I am alive and I will live my life on my own terms. 

( The title translates: "You and me, it does not change.")