Solitude

It is after 11 p.m. as I start to write this.

And once again, I am closing down the day alone.

When Rob and I first married, we started the tradition of stopping whatever we were doing at 10 p.m. and taking the time to wind down the day and to just be together – whether it was talking, watching a video or something on television, or just lying together in bed snuggling.  It quickly became the part of the day that I looked forward to the most and he told me it was for him too.  We continued the tradition even after having children – although a lot of the “together” times then included me nursing a baby to sleep at the same time and it certainly did not always happen right at 10 p.m. but it did happen – almost every night.

Those times together,

a practice we continued up until the year he died,

are what I miss the most.

Thinking about those moments we had together over the almost 18 years of our marriage and how we would

talk about how our days had gone,

talk about us,

talk about our children,

talk about the churches,

talk about our dreams of the future,

or talk about nothing at all and just hold each other in the still of the night as the day came to a close in peaceful togetherness,

is what still haunts me each night as I close each of my days in solitude.