I was thinking about how Pat and I communicated. I realized a lot of it was not in words, we often communicated with a look, touch or thought across a crowded room as in Tai Chi class. I think that couples in a long-term marriage begin to read each other. We come to think alike and there are signs of what we feel and think in our faces and movements. But it is something more than that – when we didn’t see or hear each other we knew the other was near and what mood they were having. I think we both had another sense that sensed each other’s being, identity, presence and love. I knew she loved me without the words (her love poems to me were ‘the icing on the cake’). We don’t always think in words; we don’t always reason; we often just feel, believe and yes love. Most of Pat’s and my communication with each other involved things such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, body language and other visual and emotional cues. Feelings and non-verbal thinking are the realm of our souls and identity – they have a life of there own. They are how we touch God, how soulmates touch and know each other. Pat and I were / are soulmates. It is how we communicated then and now – how I know she dwells in me and I dwell in her and that she will be present in me until we fully join after I die.
I still feel Pat is with me. In my view, Pat is still communicating with me in this same non-verbal way. She is letting me know she is still present and is waiting for “her beloved Eric” to join her in our garden kingdom in Heaven. Waking in the night I often have the overpowering feeling that Patricia is there in the bed beside me sleeping – lending her presence to comfort me. She is with me still. I believe that our marriage was forever and did not end with her death and won’t end with mine. The relationship Pat and I have on earth WILL continue in Heaven – marriage is for all eternity because God made us one in marriage. Our communion with each other and God continues forever. I don’t have to die to join my beloved Patricia – she is in the Kingdom of God within me, here and now. Pat dwells in me and I dwell in her, here and now. We are communicating non-verbally as we have always done. God is LOVE. Love is stronger than Death.