Loneliness is not temporary...

The Hubs & me

THE LULU CHRONICLES

There’s lonely and then there’s loneliness. Lonely is wanting someone to talk to. Lonely is being in a much too quiet house by yourself. Lonely is missing someone who’s gone on a trip. Lonely is a rainy day. Lonely is a bare, leaf-less tree. Lonely gives you the blues. When you’re lonely, anybody will do. However, lonely is usually temporary.

Loneliness is a whole other ballgame. I thought I knew what loneliness was, what it felt like. After all, the Hubs and I had spent some time apart when one of us was out of town. When my kids started going off to college I missed them so badly it physically hurt. But I’m here to tell you, I didn’t have a clue. It’s just as well. Knowing too much too soon is never a good idea.

It’s almost been four months since I lost Gary, and I’ve had some lonely days to be sure. But what I’m experiencing now all these weeks later is foreign to me. It is a lot like one feels when they’ve lost an arm or a leg. There is this phantom nerve-ending thing that goes on that makes you think the limb is still there. Sometimes it’s an itch on the bottom of your foot and when you go to scratch it, you are painfully made aware that you have no foot. Or sometimes a sharp sting jolts through your arm like a lightening strike causing you to almost pass out from the pain. Your gut reaction is to grab your arm, but when you do there’s nothing there. Loneliness is like that.

It lies.

Just when you think you’re going to be all right, a smell, a song, or an item of clothing sends this shutter through your body and suddenly you feel their presence, you hear their voice, their laughter is just in the other room and you run toward it only to find that they are not there. They will never be there again. Loneliness is not temporary.

Neither is it fatal. We only wish it would kill us.

But, this is what I know so far: I will never, ever stop loving my husband. I will never, ever stop thinking of him in the present tense. I will never stop expecting to see him when I walk through the door.

I also know this: God knows that I know that He knows.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalms 147:3