I’ve always been someone who documented my life as I went along – diaries, journals, stories. I have no idea where that comes from, but I’ve been doing in from a very young age. I still have my first diary from 1968 when I was 11. Lately I’ve found myself writing down things I want to remember about Bernie – favorite foods, stuff that made us laugh, shows we watched together, etc. etc. This past Sunday I wrote down, “Shawshank Redemption”. Whenever we came across it on TV (and it’s on all the time!), we would always stop whatever we were doing and watch it again. There was something about that movie that we couldn’t resist.

Later that very same day, I came across it when I was flipping through channels. I hesitated because I knew it would be hard to watch it without him, but then something told me to go ahead. There’s a famous line in the movie where Red (Morgan Freeman), and Jack (Tim Robbins) are leaning up against the prison wall talking. Red tells Jack that his dreams of living in Mexico someday was a silly “pipe dream”. Jack tells him, “It comes down to a simple choice, get busy living or get busy dying.” Even though I’ve seen this same scene a million times, it hit me in a new way. I would give anything to have my life with Bernie back, but I have to accept that I never will. How I want to live the rest of my life is up to me.

Something will happen to bring back the grief as though it were all fresh. Maybe it’s a song, a passage in a book, a scene in a movie. Sometimes part of the poignancy of that moment is how much we miss the one who cannot share it with us.

These sudden flashes back into intense grief will grow farther apart. We’ll get over them more quickly. But we’ll probably never be free of them – and wouldn’t want to be. They preserve for us our connection with the one we love. – from Healing After Loss by Martha Whitmore Hickman

Even though Bernie’s not with here with me, I take great comfort in remembering all the moments we shared. I’ve read that it’s common to be afraid of forgetting, but today’s reading gave me assurance that I don’t have to be afraid of that. Writing down my memories and the things that Bernie and I shared are a way to treasure our life together and keep him close. And that will never change.