February 16, 2024

Happy Anniversary my love!

Today is our 43rd anniversary, Annette, and the second one I have now spent without you. It’s also the 18-month anniversary of your death, and I’m spending this very special day alone with you in my heart; embracing the pain of your loss, the love I feel, the beautiful memories I have, and how your life continues to influence mine.

Shortly after your death, I wrote that as shattered as I felt, I knew that someday my heart would heal. I realize now that healing is a journey, not a destination. Instead, my grief will always be an integral part of me moving forward. This isn’t a bad thing—there is sadness, but also beauty in this. I want to remember you, and I want to feel the full range of my emotions when I do. That wonderful, beautiful connection to you is what healing means to me.

One of the many things we shared, Annette, was a desire to learn from our experiences, and sometimes the most valuable lessons come from the most tragic of these. I think about our how our experience with cancer forced us to make choices that ultimately changed us in very wonderful ways. By practicing gratitude every day, we became grateful people, and this in turn made us optimistic and joyful. By accepting death as a possible outcome, we learned to enjoy life fully in the present without fearing the future. By feeling so very grateful for each new day we awoke together, we found meaning in even the mundane, and continued to create beautiful new memories. We learned to love deeper and appreciate more, and we learned to dance in the rain!

Annette, your death has been and always will be the most difficult and painful experience of my life. As I wrote on our anniversary last year, the two things that have truly changed my life are when you came into it so long ago, and 18 months ago when you left it. Since then, I’ve been on a journey of grief and growth, of loss, loving, living, and learning. When I first heard the quote at the top of this post more than a year ago, it really made me think about what gifts I might come to appreciate because of your death, knowing I can’t undo it, only learn from it. What I’ve discovered are changes in me I could never have foreseen. I’ve learned vulnerability, empathy, wholeheartedness and how important and powerful are the connections we have with others. I have learned that life is still beautiful, and that doing the things we loved to do together connects me to you. I have learned that for me, mourning is active, not passive, and that death did not end our relationship. I’ve also learned that I want to walk with others as they journey through their grief, and that there are few better ways to honor your life and create meaning from your death than facilitating a safe environment for people to share their grief and learn from others. Recently, I was offered an opportunity to do just this. For these gifts, I am indeed grateful.

Thank you so much, Annette, for falling in love with me so many years ago and for telling me so often that it was the best decision you ever made. Loving you was most definitely mine. Happy anniversary my dear best friend. I am thinking wonderful thoughts of you.

With deep and abiding love, respect, and affection,

Your husband and soulmate,

David