"Did you know," he said in a conversational tone, a few days ago, "that Debbie died on the anniversary of Pearl Harbour?"
The room seemed very still in that moment.
The Good Rancher is also a Good Dancer, light on his feet. I saw him as he led his and Debbie's son's brand new mother-in-law onto the dance floor at the wedding reception.
He can dance out of the way of bulls charging directly at him.
And from childhood he has mastered the art of dancing deftly around anything that could cause him pain.
From the outset of our acquaintance the GR has said that the past is the past; there is nothing a person can do to change it and so we need to appreciate the moment and look to the future. This year he has reminded himself more often than most.
So in our household his simple comment that evening was something out of the ordinary, something that gave me pause.
I am the product of the union of a Baptist and a Brethren; I certainly did not learn the quick-step or the two-step, but I am very practiced at the side-step in an attempt to avert any misstep. I will go out of my way to avoid pushing people's buttons or causing them pain.
I went up to Edmonton for an appointment the next day and came home late on the 6th night. Just before I joined the checkout queue at Costco - a must-stop for people who dwell far away from the purchase of even a jug of milk - I impulsively swung by the florist corner. Every instinct inside me screamed, "Leave it alone. Don't intrude. Respect privacy. Don't be pushy."
I selected a bouquet of two dozen ivory roses and added it to my cart.
I handed them to him when I got home. "These are for you. in honour of. Pearl Harbour. and Debbie."
We put them in water and took them down to the basement, the only place safe from cats.
December 7th was a busy day, but not in the way we anticipated. We couldn't process calves because of the snow that hit us sideways, driven by the wind that shaped those flakes into arrows of ice; so the men did some catch-up work and some planning in the shop. That evening the GR and I headed into Hanna to see a couple of people. On our way home he said, "I have to take milk out to the barn cats and then I think I'll run into Endiang."
I heard him going downstairs.
Some time later he came home and enveloped me in a hug. "You are the person I love most in this world," he murmured. He had reconciled us both in his head and his heart. He seemed truly at peace for the first time in a year and a half.
The next day I took coffee and doughnuts over to our gathering place behind the bale stacks. I saw them almost immediately. Twelve ivory roses.
Twelve for her, left tenderly on her final earthly resting place, one for each year she has been gone.
And twelve for him here, one for each year of missing her.
There is no statute of limitation on how much grief a heart can hold, of how much loss a person can bear. Everyone sorrows in their own way and in their own time. When you're bereaved of the one you love at age 48, the rhythm of your world changes.
And yet you can't stop, even for a day, to process this unspeakable reality. After all, the cows don't know your heart's broken. You barely know it yourself. So you have to keep going: one step after another to take, one orphan calf after another to feed, one water hole after another to chop, one load of hay after another to fork, one bill after another to pay. Repeat until the numbness wears off, until it feels like the new normal is almost normal.
But, as with grief, there is also no limitation on how much love a heart can hold. When the gift of a new love is proffered, it does not cancel out or supersede the old love. Each in its own mysterious way makes the other more precious.
Sometimes it just takes time to figure it out, how to weave the strands of the new with the old and make the fabric of a heart even stronger.
Sometimes it takes twelve years and twenty-four roses divided by two.
But it's worth it. It's worth it to be able to admit finally that "love is stronger than death."
And that "two are better than one, because ... if either of them falls down, one can help the other up."
And that "love never fails."
And that "the greatest of these is love."
