The Way We Were and the Way I Thought We Would Be

The Way We Were and the Way I Thought We Would Be
Job 29: 1-25

They say that if your spouse dies after a time of illness and/or gradual decline, initially your memories are dominated by the nature of those last months, but that eventually older memories come to reassert themselves, memories of the time when the person you loved was well and flourishing and your marriage was more joyful. When my first wife died after being ill for many years, I doubted whether this would be the case because it was nearly thirty years since she had been really well. I tried to encourage the process by putting up photographs dating from the earlier years of our marriage, yet even this action generated mixed feelings. The person she was thirty years ago was so different from the person she became that looking at the photos simply heightened a sense of resentment and/or sadness about the way her illness affected her...