This Tribute From Mary Katharine Ham To Her Late Husband Is Amazing.

It’s not news that Mary Katharine Ham lost her husband a couple years ago in a tragic bike accident. She was 29 weeks pregnant with their 2nd child at the time of his death.

Somehow, I missed her tribute back in September that she wrote about Jake at The Federalist.  I’m so glad I found it recently, and for those of you who may have missed it too, I highly recommend you give it a read at the source.

I can’t imagine the anguish of losing a spouse, especially in such an unexpected way, and I thankfully have no frame of reference for the emotions that she experienced. That said,  the emotions she’s described are likely universal when faced with the death of a spouse, but few folks are able to articulate them in as beautiful a way as she did.

She wrote this piece on the 2 year anniversary of Jake’s death, saying that it took her about a year to even find words that could express what she was feeling.

And oh, did she ever find the words.

MKH recounted how shortly after Jake died, the condolences poured in – from people she knew well and also from complete strangers.  She wrote:

And with every envelope, I’d have a glimmer of hope, that somehow, someway, this one would have an answer inside. I knew at the time it was irrational, but I couldn’t stop. The hope was too tantalizing. Maybe this was the one—this card would explain everything! This letter would give me the reason our lives had been so utterly shattered in an instant. But the fact is those words, no matter how well-meaning and wise, couldn’t tell me that. Even Scripture could only reassure, not really explain in the way humans want but can’t have.

She then described Jake’s “spark:”

Jake’s life always brings to mind a spark and then some. Jake’s soul, to me, was a bonfire. He was here and he was in your face and he was warm and bright. He roared with enthusiasm at the beginning, even the hope of something new, sometimes a little too much. His glow was infectious, throwing sparks into the night air, silhouetted against a dark sky before they landed on everyone in his vicinity. He mellowed to embers as the night wore on, usually over a glass of bourbon or a beer.

The light went out. This fire I’d stood next to for seven years just went out, like a flood light on a switch. Boom. Imagine staring into a fire, and then suddenly turning 180 degrees to survey the woods behind you. I couldn’t see. I was standing in what otherwise was my life, and I knew all the other parts of it were there, but I couldn’t understand its contours anymore. I was standing in my own life, blinded, blinking away those disorienting shimmery green spots.

She writes more about moving through the pain and coping with the loss, and then writes this, the most poignant part (to me, at least) of her column:

The fire is more remote than it used to be. My distance from it feels disconcerting even as it relieves the pain. I remember someone saying to me, right after he died, that they’d like to fast-forward to a time five years later when it didn’t hurt so much to remember him, and we could talk about him with smiles and laughter. I remember feeling panicky at the thought. I thought the intensity of the pain was all I had left of the fire. It was my tether to a time when he still existed on this Earth. And I knew every moment of every day, I was moving inexorably further from that time, and there was a part of me that hated it.

And then sometimes to this day, without warning, like a hot ember in my hand, I’ll catch a memory, and it will sear just like that first day. But then I remember this means he is not so far away, and we’re not so far from him, and it makes me smile. That’s a strange thing about grief: relief from it can sometimes be painful and pain can bring relief.

But most days, we live on the edge of the fire, and it doesn’t feel cold or searing. The scent of the fire is in our hair and on our old sweatshirts, familiar, comforting, and persistent. The sparks are in my children’s eyes, and their own little fires grow brighter every day.

The entire piece is well worth your time to read.  Go.  Do it now. Report back.