When we fell in love it was a long and lovely fall tumbling heart first into a trust so deep and wide neither of us recognized it at first.
Here where the soul is bare and unashamed and caught off guard by the beauty of another we discovered home for the first time in our lives.
It is not to be taken for granted – this serendipity of finding what we knew our souls needed but had never been able to find – a shelter from the storm, a refuge amid life’s troubles, a sanctuary of healing grace.
Your dying shook the foundations of this home we fashioned out of love and sweat and laughter and tears.
Now many questions travel with me in this liminal territory I’ve entered – where am I to turn for shelter, how will I recover a sense of home, how do I cultivate a circle of trust, how does one pray with a heart bereft, how do I travel this long, lonely road?
Travel with me, sweetheart. Please, I pray, travel with me, as I wait for answers and go in search of them.
Travel with me, sweetheart, and in the traveling hold these questions with me until a new dawn arrives.
Travel with me and be home for me, and in the sweet mystery of love be home with me.
In the morning as you cautiously rise from your side of the bed I am there.
I am waiting hoping it has been a restful night.
You are out of breath from the simple act of sitting up. You are tired in more ways than anyone can know.
Yet your smile reaches out and melts me. Will I remember the feeling of this moment?
Memory is imperfect when up against the complex beauty of a human soul. Memory only goes so far and then you want nothing less than to be in the presence again of the one you love.
You are sitting there on your side of the bed and motion me to come near. The nearness is the most comforting to you as well as me.
You lean forward placing your head against my chest and rest and breathe quietly prayerfully beautifully
and then you raise your head and look into my eyes and I into yours and without words we are reassured love is here.
Our vows till death do us part will soon reach their consummation and yet love only increases and mystifies me in its tenacious hold over me.
You are the rest of me you said to me more than once and I truly believe it for in those eyes I get lost in you for all time.
~ Mark Lloyd Richardson For my beloved Dallis March 16, 2021
Dallis & I on the Big Island November 2014 (Photo: Wendy Granger)
My dear Dallis,
Sweetheart, I know I told you as you were dying that everything would be okay … that I would be okay … but it was a lie. I don’t like lying to you and I didn’t intend to do so; I was just trying to convince myself, and I was telling you what I thought you needed to hear so that you could let go and be released from a body that was failing you. But now I am utterly heartbroken. I feel completely lost without you. I want so badly to hear your voice again. I want to kiss your lips. I want to hold you and be held by you.
What touched my life so thoroughly during our love affair and marriage is how you would look at me with such affection in your eyes it melted my heart. You brought me to tears so many times just by being honest with me about how you felt. We told each other our deepest truths. We relied on one another to always care most about the other.
I can’t believe how lucky I was to have you in my life for nineteen years. If I had known sooner that our time together was nearing the end, I would have stopped working earlier and devoted all my time to you … to us! I would have reveled all the more in your smile and laugh. I would have asked you to tell me more about the greatest joys of your life, all the way back. I would have wanted to watch your New Zealand slides with you, and have you regale me about that favorite adventure of yours, years before we met.
I would also have wanted to hear more about the places of pain and disappointment in your life, many of which I know about and others I imagine were left unsaid.
This grief hurts beyond imagining. I feel like I’m dying inside. I struggle just to do the simplest things and get through each day.
I wish there was a way to communicate with you, my beloved. I write these thoughts I’ve been thinking and wish I could get this message to you. You were the very one I needed in my life. You cheered my successes, savored our relationship, and gave me every bit of yourself to love and enjoy. You were my anchor, my safe haven, my source of lightheartedness and joy.
I’m trying to figure out how to live without you near to me, your physical presence that is. I have never been through more painful days than these. A heavy sadness follows me everywhere, even to sleep. Nothing in my life experience compares to this aching I feel in body, mind and spirit.
Dallis, my beautiful one, it is my deepest hope that you are where there is no more pain and no more crying, and where you know deep and abiding peace. I also hope to see you often in my dreams.
