Tuesday? Yea, it’s Tuesday…All of the preparations and getting ready for the Memorial Service are over….Family is all gone home…work calls…and life goes on.

The last few days have been those flashes of reality… you know… those things you are so used to thinking and doing that they come without forethought. A bit of news from a friend and the instant thought to share that when you get home…but, oh yeah, she’s not there to share that with. Turning over in the middle of the night and hoping you are not disturbing her…. oh yea, she’s not there to disturb. Many of those little bits of reality have been coming these last few days. Then, today as I was driving home, almost to the driveway…a sudden burst of reality, feeling like an elevator that is dropping out of control, she is not here! This house we moved into together… she will never be back.

As I got to the house and walked around inside, it struck like a bolt of lightning… seemingly out of nowhere… looking at her pictures on the board from Saturday’s memorial service…this isn’t some temporary little glitch… she’s gone, she will never be coming back here. And then it broke open… the wailing of grief,

over and over again, in wave after wave it came, uncontrollable bawling…”How could this be?” “How could this happen?” Still the waves continued to roll out of my insides, bursting out in uncontrolled sobbing and wailing. Gone…

It was like an underground river had suddenly been released… all the control that I had needed to get through these last days let go in shrieks of lament and aloneness.

It has nothing to do with faith, nothing to do with assurance of life eternal… it has everything to do with the one who is a par of you is  now brutally ripped out of your existence. She is not there to come home to. She is not there to share with. She is not there to laugh at my jokes. She is just not there … for the rest of my life on this earth… she will not be there any more. Final…reality. Reality, sometimes in bits sometimes in great heaving outbursts.

So, now I live in a new land. The land of Firsts. I don’t even know what that means, but here I am, on foreign soil. No choice but to move ahead and be ready for the “Reality bits” in this land of firsts. Kind of like the TV series, “LOST.”  Crashed on an uncharted island. Make a life for yourself, or get consumed by the island.

Only I am NOT LOST… I mourn, I grieve, and bawl and wail, but I am not lost. I guess it is all part of living here in the land of firsts. It has been 40 years since I have been this alone. But I an not lost and I am not alone.

Well, I’d better go wash my face with some cold water, and blow my nose good. My dear friends Terry and MaryLynn will be here soon. They are taking me out to dinner. And came all the way from Minneapolis, can you believe that? Oops, the eyes are leaking again… I’ll go wash my face, and learn how to live in victory in the Land of Firsts. With Jesus’ help, maybe I can be like old Caleb and conquer some mountains in this new land