Random Observations on Separation

I've started wearing a watch. I always do when Tim leaves. When he's here I chart my days by his movements: I know when to start breakfast by when he gets up, I allow Zach to play video games only after Tim's left for work, dinner is cooking an hour before Tim arrives home. When we're out together, I ask the ever-watch-wearing Tim what time it is. When he's gone, I'm lost in time. So I wear a watch.

I don't like wearing a watch.

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You know how you can still feel a person's presence after they've left you? How you drop a friend off and you still sense them as you drive away? That might be the hardest part of saying good-bye to Tim. After he left, the air in the van was still imprinted with his silhouette. At home, he's slept on his side of the bed so many times that his aura was left for days before the molecules forgot what it felt like to surround him. His imprint is everywhere- in every room of the house, on his pillow, on his chair at the kitchen table. It's both a blessing and a curse as the air closes in around the spaces it kept for him; it's easier to go about the day without the acute pain of missing him but sad how space forgets a person used to inhabit it. I think that's what ghosts are, the random remembrance of time and space of who they used to surround and caress.

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Last week at church, my arm brushed Tim's and I cried as I realized that it was the last time I'd stand with him at church for awhile. I value worshiping together. Our spiritual lives are the completion of our physical ones, and joining with my soulmate in intimate communion with God is an honor and deeply moving. Yesterday, I worshiped without him. It is true that when everything else falls away, we are left exposed before God and he covers us. He is the husband to the husbandless and the father to the fatherless. He is all I need.