Do this in remembrance of me. Well I do many things in remembrance of my departed spouse, Patricia. I think everybody wants to be remembered. That’s why they keep dairies. I keep the house pretty much as it was before we got the shocking news – mind you not as clean. My routines are pretty much as they were before she died. I kiss her photo every morning and say good morning and every evening I kiss it again and bid her good night. I repeat what we always said after “I love you forever” as well. The whole house is my memorial. I don’t want to forget one thing about our life together. All my memories of Pat bring tears and smiles and both happiness and despair and I never want them to go away. Every time I am in Church or at our grave I say a prayer for Pat and feel the warmth of her memory kneeling there beside me. I tried to finish the projects she was working on where I could either by myself or asking a friend to complete it. I put together, “Quiet Love … eyes to see and words to tell the truths that are most true.” Quiet Love … Poems,” “Found Poems: the blood and bone remember.” And “Grief: journey to GOD and us.” I bring flowers (lilacs when in bloom) to the grave as often as I visit it. I keep a running letter to her and air anything that may have been left unsaid. All her books (authored by her and her favourites) are together on the shelves she kept them on. I remember her on all our anniversaries and on family birthdays. I try to live my life in a way she would have wished. I repeat, I want to keep her memory alive in me until we reunite in our place in Heaven. It is part of her dwelling in me and me dwelling in her. I want her presence to get ever stronger in me.
I know there are some who want the memories to weaken to ease their pain. They move out of their home, take down all photos, and even move to another town. That is not me. Pat and I lived in OUR house everything was ours as our hearts belonged to each other and US. The memories are ours – us against the world. Home was our castle and the place we were and still are most together. I want to live there until I join her in our promised place in Heaven. Our TRINITY still lives in this house – memories, her presence, her writings, crafts, quilts, things she knitted and all and will until it is time to move to our garden kingdom in Heaven. I do not want that Pat sized hole in my heart to go away until it is filled again by Pat herself.