In so many ways I dreaded the fact of the arrival of this day. So now the entire circle of the sun has been made. I had already seen her in a casket after her autopsy and her prep for burial. I had them dress her in the clothes she had just worn on our date nite out the night before she died. It was incomprehensible to me that she slipped away and death took her from me and there was literally nothing I could have done to save her. What Jorge and I knew in mere seconds took almost a year and a few doctors later to finally maybe put to rest the technical reasons of her death, but I am also certain we will never really know why. We gathered today one year ago in Green Bay to publicly say goodbye to Lindsey Rae. More than any other emotion in the church that evening was just the common sense of Shock.

The Action Figure: Girl in Motion!
Lie still in a casket covered in flowers.

While all of you who loved her, mourned her and most all have moved very far indeed down life’s river as well, there are a few of us for whom this sense of shock is still reverberating loudly.
Every night now for a year I have laid down to the inconceivable fact that she is not there beside me in bed.

My love now awaits me of this I am sure. I will never love anyone quite like I loved her simply because there is not another Lindsey in this world to give my heart to, in that special way, for that blessed time, that we changed each others hearts forever.

Song of Songs 8:6-7
Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, its jealousy as enduring as the grave. Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame.

This was the scripture I quoted when I spoke at her funeral last year. I say it again now. I just now feel like I am letting her go. Mexico was the right thing to do, the right place to be on the anniversary of her death just as it is right now to be at home in Texas now.

The year of “the firsts is over”, widows , widowers, parents that have lost children especially know what the year of firsts is all about. I am not afraid to admit I was never scared before her and surely not a moment with her. But I have found myself so lost and so scared many times since her death. I pray that having done all that i have done that I may find firmer footing this coming year.

Thank you to all who have given support. But there is a special kind of friend of whom there are but a few. They who are capable to be available , to be open to being on the other end of a phone line at any time of the day, any time of the night to just Be Present in a time when grief threatened to ruin or conquer me to help me to stand, to not try and fix what death had broken. To those brave souls, I am indebted beyond what i can describe. No one can fix what death breaks. But I quote again some deeper truth that somehow prevails.

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Por siempre en mi corazón, mi amor