Your Dying Spouse 6: You Can't Follow (Five Minute Friday)

It's time for Five Minute Friday, a five minute writing challenge on a keyword. It's hosted by Kate Motaung, and if you go to her website (www.katemotaung.com) you'll find some splendid examples of the writer's craft.

Today the word is FOLLOW. I have the two additional challenges of keeping to my current series on dealing with a dying mate...and writing on a Smartphone, the owner of which wants back pronto.

So let's see how it goes...

This shared trip through the Valley of the Shadow will one day come to a fork in the road, and your paths will begin to diverge.

That point isn't death itself. It comes sooner, when your mate realizes that the trip is truly one-way, and that the destination, veiled by mist for so much of our lives, is becoming starkly visible.

With the best will in the world, that's a place to which you cannot (yet) follow.

And it's a place you can't know, and you shouldn't (remember Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain"?) pretend.

There will be changes. Your mate may become serious in the contemplation of eternity...or may turn lighthearted, freed from the cares and posturing that take up so much of our 'normal' days.

You can't be there with your mate except to be supportive. Hold him or her close, and give your heart in listening.

Now is the hour. (That's the title of a terrific Maori song, by the way.)

But you CAN learn something about the person you chose to love. In these days, in the seeming separation, you will gain a perspective on their heart, and truly know this person of intimate mystery for the first time.

Almost too late?

No.

You can choose to pay attention, and walk in the world for them, for their memory. You can carry forward a lost but living heart.

And you can carry the values of the loved and lost as a promise for when you meet again, in the place where all tears are dried.