Trying To Make Sense Of It All (I)

Today is the 27th day of Jeannie's passing and the number, 27 has always been significant in her life and therefore also mine since our lives became entwined. We were married at 27, I had an office on the 27th floor, Jeannie's car number was 27, Jeannie and Krystyn were both born on a 27th, Prince Cheah came to us on a 27th, and so forth. It is also past the 21 days that Maxwell Maltz in his book "Psycho Cybernetics" says is the minimum period it takes for humans to get used to anything "new". In other words, it takes at least 21 days to effect any perceptible change in a mental image.

I did not need 21 days to accept the fact that my Jeannie had passed away and her body cremated three days later. I accept the physical irreversibility and though she would not want us to grieve too much, I continue to miss her physical presence dearly. Life as they say, goes on and the world stops for no one. Facing the realities of life has never been an issue for me and whether it be personal or work concerns, I have taken them in my stride.

Adjusting to life without Jeannie is difficult but I can and will manage. More disquieting to me are the hopes that Jeannie and I shared for ourselves.

The supreme hope was for us to be together FOREVER. Ours was a relationship that was "too good to be true" and we strongly believed it must have been forged in another time and plane. We knew that in an earthly sense, all good things must come to an end and inevitably we broached the subject of death; if there really was such a thing as eternity would we choose to spend it together? The answer that was so easy to decide became the basis of a fervently shared Hope. As in Life, there are no guarantees in Death-there is only hope when we are alive.

It is this Hope that I carry with me now. For now I will take comfort in the words of My Darling Jeannie that were written as a comment to my post She... :

"Our marriage is the golden ring in a chain, whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is ever lasting love.

Trust our Love, for in it is hidden the gate to eternity...."

Uncannily, Jeannie's last line above could have been an adaptation of line 10 in Chapter 27 of Kahlil Gibran's celebrated work, "The Prophet"; that chapter is entitled "Death".

I have never been a religious man for I could not live by faith alone. Having started out as an atheist, I developed into an agnostic before toying with the values of secular humanism. I trust (have faith?) that our Love is true as the past 22 years have been bliss. There is now this yearning in me to develop a conceptual framework that can encompass and vindicate my Hope, comfort a restless heart; reconciliation of self with self.

I could be grasping at straws but my further readings and thoughts on the matter will be contained in some future postings in this blog as I seek to make sense of it all.