Dear Dave,

It's been a year: a year of loneliness, sorrow, unimaginable grief, stress, anguish, fear, tears, hesitation, of slogging through the days, enduring the nights, even glimpses of joy. 
It's been a year.
I had no idea it would be this hard, this difficult. You warned me about the loneliness and the grief but the work has been unimaginable as well. It would break your heart to know of promises others made to you and haven't keep, the money you loaned and not returned, of how some people have simply disappeared. The lack of basic human decency has almost overwhelmed me, how do people live with themselves? It has dang near broken my back, not to mention my spirit but here I am, a year later and still standing. 
It's been a year. 
I've allowed given myself the gift of a year; now it's time to set aside grief and begin mourning. Grief is different; it's more immediate, more necessary, more now. Absolutely, it will continue to catch me unawares but, I'm hopeful, those times of being poured out onto the kitchen floor, sobbing my heart out with dogs licking my face, are over. Please God...? Mourning will continue the rest of my life, a dark horse but not out front.
As Jack Lewis said of his marriage to Joy, "This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it meant. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next." 
And, Dave, so you have.
The Baptist Minister came by last month, he didn't know you'd died. Dave, we both stood in the driveway and wept, both for the loss of you and for the knowledge you'd made your peace with God and now have Heaven as your residence. That man of God had so many nice things to say about you; I hope to remember his kindness all my days. It's a memory buffer against the others who didn't do their ministerial job.
Others who knew you have said you'd be proud of me. I surely hope so. That ancient advice, "don't make any major decisions the first year" is good advice...except when it isn't. I've made major ginormous decisions this past year: I've bought property, cattle, kept the farm going, traveled, continued helping with the Community Association and VFD. I've kept putting one foot in front of the other until...here I am, a year later and still thanking God for His mercy, grace, love and goodness poured out to me.
Yes, I know death comes either to us or for us and, no matter how much we anticipate it, it's always a shock, in fact, a huge surprise! I love you, Dave, and mourn for what will never be. Why is it some would rather remind me of arguments you and I had? Why don't they remember the good great times as well? Are they jealous? How sad if that's the case. You and I never understood jealousy; what a rotten, consuming, ugly emotion! And for what? When someone would say, "so and so ran off with another man's wife", you'd say, "if you cheat with me, you'll cheat on me." Loyalty is so needed today and there are so many men and women who don't have, nor give, loyalty. How can a marriage exist, much less flourish, without trust?
You taught me well, Dave. 
You were friend, lover, husband, mentor, provider, protector; you were, in fact a complete package. I complimented you but didn't complete you, except, perhaps in love. Of the lessons I might have taught you, learning how to love again was, perhaps, the most important.
Yet, I don't want to be one of those people who make saints of their deceased. You could be meaner than a two-headed snake when you chose. When I told Mary this, she said, "Yeah, but he was your two-headed snake" and we both laughed.
This past year has been spent not only grieving but putting myself back together. God has is doing His work in me. Yes, that work will continue for the rest of my days, but the major work of healing my grief He has done with a tender and gentle hand.
So, I am spending this week, of the first year anniversary of your death, by myself in a remote place where I know no one and no one knows me. Was it difficult, getting on that plane and traveling by myself? You bet! Did I question myself? Yep! Did I feel fear? Oh my yes! And then...I did it anyway. I don't want to be one of those women people who are afraid to travel, unwilling to leave the comfortable and known, who make themselves a prisoner when there's a great big beautiful world to explore. 
So, I am far from home, saying good-bye all over again. I am putting to rest all those dreams we shared...Thistle Cove Farm, travel, old age together. It is right and true although I, in my ignorance, would have it otherwise. In turn, I am dreaming anew because without a vision, I will surely perish.
I trust you were welcomed by those great cloud of witnesses gone on before. 
I trust Christ welcomed you with arms opened wide, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." 
I trust in the distant future smile, we'll see each other again. I wonder if we'll know each other in Heaven? That's a question that bothers some but not me. Heaven will be so glorious with Him what does it matter if we recognize each other? We knew each other on earth and it was here we reached "proper perfection"; it is there perfection will be achieved.
Dave, thank you. 
Thank you for all of it...friendship, love, marriage, life, travel, the farm, the animals, the coziness, and, yes, even the arguments for they taught me as well. 
Tu manques a moi, Beloved, good-bye.

Blessings ~ life...LIFE!...~ Dave ~