A moment

I had a moment tonight.  I wanted to spit it out while it was fresh in my head.

I sat thinking of my husband, as of course I often do.  I was thinking how most of the unhappy things I talk about when talking about Storm are involved in how and why he died.  It hurts me still, two years later.  Sometimes I wish I could express this sort of pain, but I have never really found the words.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the great blessing that the father had heaped onto our lives.  Marriage is never perfect, and we were as human as the next humans. The last week or so of our lives together was particularly difficult. 

Yet, when I look back at those eight years, they are unquestioningly the most amazing years of my life.  Not just in my relationship with Storm, but my life overall became amazing.  Everything that Storm touched in my life increased.  He could tap into my innermost needs and dreams, and help me realize them.  He was not only determined to make sure we prioritized my time with my daughters, but he also worked to make the times we were together as special as he was able, in his own loud, blunt way.  We returned home to Oregon so that I could be with my daughters, and my family, especially my Mom.  I’m grateful for that, because I was able to be close to Mom until the end.  Storm’s great love for me translated into helping me help him make our lives everything that was good for us, which was good for every single area of my life.

The most amazing thing about this man to me was that he so strongly believed in so many things that were Biblical, while he was, in his own words, a deviant.  In polite company I use the word heathen, which would make him chuckle, I’m certain.  It astounded him that he would state a standard of being, one of his uncompromising principles, and I would quote the Bible echoing what he had said.  He didn’t lie, he didn’t cheat, he didn’t hold back good advice.  He didn’t make traps for people, he confronted them directly.  He wasn’t one person in public, and another in private.  And he loved his wife not as he loved himself, but in so many ways, more than he loved himself.  That love has shaped everything about me, almost entirely for the good.

He saw that Torah was important to me, that the Sabbath was sacred, and that I longed to properly keep the feasts of Yah, though I barely knew how.  Together we learned.  He cooked the lamb for our seder together in Illinois, and he gladly broke bread at the table with me and my daughter.  We turned our garden into an accidental sukka every year.  We had scored a free gazebo frame with no cover.  This metal skeleton made the perfect up spot for all of our tomatoes.  By the end of summer, tomatoes small and large dripped from the bars, making us reach up to pick them.  I remember beautiful cool days standing in the shade, picking the last few that made it all the way to ripe. He kept Shabbat with me, grateful for the selfish day to have me actually sitting down with him, and each one was a highly anticipated day.

During my life with Storm I learned to garden, earned a business degree, learned how to admit I was wrong, learned how to apologize, and became aware that I was a person of worth.   The fact that he loved me filled me with confidence every day.  I reasoned that if this amazing man loved me, then there must be something of worth in me.  Shining in his eyes, I saw that person that he saw looking back at me, and I couldn’t help but respond to his confidence and love.  

The truth is, the last week or so of his life was insignificant to the magnitude of that love.  It was so intense, I am scarred by it’s absence.  As time passes and the scars and pains begin to heal, what I’m remembering is the love, and the good moments, and the walks on the beach, and the many bottles of beer, Fourth of July baseball games, and barbecues at five in the morning, cause that’s when I got off work.  I remember Sabbath mornings nestled in each others arms, and I remember laying in bed all night awake talking because we didn’t want to be done talking yet.  I remember traveling 2400 miles over four days and turning on the radio exactly once.  I remember feeling welcome every time I walked into a room he was in, even if I hadn’t even seen him yet.

I will never not love this man.  I can only hope it stops hurting so much.  I have no choice but to move on, because we only have the moment we are in.  

Storm once looked at me and almost casually asked me what kind of wife I wanted to be for him.  I grabbed the Scriptures, and together we read Proverbs 31.  After I finished, he was quiet a moment, and thought about it carefully.  Then he said, in his sexy southern fried Aussie drawl, “My Rose, my love, don’t you know that you are already all of those things?”

Please, Abba, Father, Yahweh, help me every day to be the woman Storm saw in me.  Amen.