It seems I am not getting through to many what I mean when I say I believe the death of a spouse is truly different from the loss of any other family member. I found that those who understood were either High Anglicans or Catholics. So, I looked up what the Catholic Church had to say about marriage.
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church it is explained that “the intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. God himself is the author of marriage.” The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. ” By reason of their state in life and of their order, Christian spouses have their own special gifts in the People of God. “This grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony is intended to perfect the couple’s love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity. By this grace, they “help one another to attain holiness in their married life and in welcoming and educating their children.” Christ is the source of this grace. “Just as of old God encountered his people with a covenant of love and fidelity, so our Savior, the spouse of the Church, now encounters Christian spouses through the sacrament of Matrimony. “Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens” “and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love”
Wow that is right on. It is what I’ve been trying to say. In the sacrament of marriage God joins two entities into one. The term “one flesh” means that just as our bodies are one whole entity and cannot be divided into pieces and still be a whole, so God intended it to be with the marriage relationship. There are no longer two entities (two individuals), but now there is one entity (a married couple). There are a number of aspects to this union. First and foremost, our identity is bound with one another, the identity of each is united in the identity of the marriage. The death of a spouse is truly different from the loss of any other family member; the spiritual entity made by God remains united; half in my heart the other half in heaven. I believe this with all my being; I really haven’t lost Patricia I have gained Christ; I am one with her in the arms of Christ in Heaven and she is still one with me in my heart.
God has a higher calling for marriage. Even as we were serving Christ with our lives before marriage, in marriage we served Christ together as a unit. I was joyful when Pat was confirmed and able to take communion beside me. As a couple pursues serving Christ together, the joy which the Spirit gives filled our marriage. In the Garden of Eden, there were three present (Adam, Eve, and God), and there was joy. So, if God is central in a marriage today, there also will be joy. Without God, a true and full oneness is not possible. C. S. Lewis understood this when he wrote to Sheldon Vanauken that Sheldon should work toward the perfect marriage, “GOD and US”. I add, marriage is an earthly trinity – Pat, I and the third person, our Love. God created marriage in the image of the Trinity.
True Love in marriage forces us with all our being, to acknowledge in each other that same absolute central significance which, because of the power of our egos, we are conscious of only in our own selves – our very egos unite! Our identity, the very center of our personal being shifts to our marriage, this leads to the indissoluble union of two lives into one: only of it does the Bible say: “They shall be one flesh”. And after  the death of both shall become united in one real eternal being. I repeat what I’ve said before: when, death separates the physical entities into two halves – half in my heart, the other half in heaven, it upsets the equilibrium of wholeness and causes the pain of grief as both halves chase after each other as they seek a new balance with each other. We will not be fully whole again until we both are fully one in Heaven.