Today is the tenth anniversary since my sweet husband’s death.

I wrote him a letter from my heart to his:

My Sweet, Sweet Manuel,

Each morning I awaken to the beautiful sight of the sun shining through the stained glass piece in my room of you and me two weeks before our wedding. It brings me comfort and a smile to my face. I can still smell the essence of you, feel the tender touch of your soft hands, and hear the sweet and funny words in my ear. It is not at all what I imagined it would be like at this point of the journey. The beautiful spirit of ‘My Manuel’ lives on for me. You encourage me, light my way in the dark, and remain by my side.

These past ten years I have been relearning how to walk, talk, and see in a world without you. In the genesis of this unwanted journey, I felt as though our beautiful, intricate tapestry of our lives that we had lovingly sewn over thirty years, one fine stitch at a time, had thoroughly unraveled leaving me cold and alone. Today I see that the fragments of our story remain intact. Tapestries are made with two threads, the weft and the waft. It is made sturdy enough to endure any manner of tragedy it is presented with. The miracle is that the fabric does not deteriorate or fall apart at the seams. No. It goes through a process of metamorphoses.  Not unlike the butterfly, our masterpiece is hidden in a cocoon for a time to merge the past with the present. We are all still a family, the five of us. That will never change. What is so clear to me today is that the bond that fuses me to Max and Crystal has been fortified, I see a future for us, we have new goals and aspirations. Thank you for choosing “us”.