the deepest secret

I came across this poem in a book I read once, it's a poem about love and the deepness of it, how we are never left without it, a promise for a new hope and a new life, words from the heart. I shared it at our Ladies Tea in April...here it is again, along with some other words that I shared that night...

i carry your heart with me by e e cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) I am never without it (anywhere

i go, you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear

no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want

no world (for beatuiful, you are my world...my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (i carry it in my heart).

This is how it is when you lose someone, no matter how it happens, whether by distance or by death, but even with this loss...comes the hope of love...I have felt this loss and the hope that comes with this kind of love.

Near the end of 1973 I became a wife and started a new life with my husband. We never were much for sweet talk or using sweet heart names. It was always Bud, I was his and he was mine. In the last few years we started using 'Honey'...but mostly for a loving reprimand or as a tease.

We were a team, for 36 years in marriage, loving life and sometimes fighting life. Often when we were working together at some job that he had in mind to get done, my eyes would say to him "Really?" and he'd look back at me, his eyes saying "Yes, just do it." We got a lot of things done that way.

Two years ago, my Buddy lost his fight on this earth, God had another job in mind for him...a new life with Him.

On that last night, my Buddy was hooked up with Iv's, oxygen hoses and draining tubes. He was connected to monitors that read his heart rate, his blood pressure and measured his oxygen levels. He lay in a bed fitted with special mattresses, attached to equipment that seemed overpowering, overwhelming. He wanted me to move his bed back so that maybe it would give length to one of his hoses. I tried not to let him see, but he saw my eyes say "really?" and then, I saw his eyes say "yes, just do it."

I did it, it was the last job we did together...it was an honor and a blessing to have shared his last days and to have witnessed the dignity and grace he fought his battle with. It is a new life for him, he is walking with Christ. And despite the loss it is a new life for me...

Now I am working at little jobs with my grandchildren, 10 little buddies who look back at me with the eyes of their Papa. And life goes on.

I slept beside him that night, this night, 2 years ago, the first time in a month, the last time forever...

i carry his heart with me... i carry it in my heart.