Things I know about "Remembering"

Last night my daughter came to me with a question. A question that surprised me as much as made me step back for a minute. It has been 2 years and 9 months since the Love of my life went to be with Our Father God. There are days it seems like forever ago and nights that it seems like only yesterday. This will probably be the same forever I would think. In that time I have battled with loving another for so many reasons. I ran from love as if it were a huge sin against everything I believed in. Did I deserve to love again when I had lost my way with Sheila once? Could I love again the same way as I have loved this precious lady for 26 years? Was I even allowed to have a second love when the first love was more beautiful than any man ever deserved to know... I anchored these thoughts in my mind for the past nearly 3 years.
Answers to these questions? I answered some of them in my own heart.Some were answered by Sheila her self. I am sure here are those that do not believe that those that we love revisit us after they are in heaven. I will not argue that issue here, today. I know in my hart that they do and that Sheila has visited me so many times in the past few years. Sometimes simply for comfort and other times she came to help me find the answers to questions that wracked my mind and infiltrated my dreams in the night. Thoughts that would leave me sometimes asking the very same question that Shannon presented to me. My heart cried all night pondering her words. Trying to answer my questions as best as I could. The deserving love I guess I am still pondering. Loving the same way was and will never happen again. I don't think you ever love the same because the person you are now with is not the same as your first love. Being allowed to love again I guess could be looked at several ways.
But before I get too far ahead, you must be wondering what the question was that Shannon asked me that started all of this today. Crying, she asked me if by choosing to love again, did it mean I was forgetting My Sheila. Would I now have a new life and new family? Would everything change forever? My answer was not hard to find. First off, our lives were forever changed the day that Sheila went to heaven. Nothing would ever be the same and nothing would ever feel like it did when Sheila was alive here. I told her that my decision to love again would never mean that I have nor make me forget her mother. I explained that I simply did not want to be alone for the rest of life on earth. I explained that she and her sister would always be my closest of heart as they are a part of their mother and the woman I have loved I am sure forever. The woman I am with will become an extension of my already beautiful family. I tried with all of my heart to show her that Sheila was never going to be less to me nor ever be replaced in my heart. Her places in my memory were solid and forever and would last until I died.
Being allowed to love again???? I don't know the answer to that question yet. I have cried a million tears today asking the question over and over. I only know that I will remember My Sheila long past when the last stars go out in the sky. I will laugh at the things we did together. I will remember our first walk in the rain. I will relive watching our daughters being born and watching them grow. Never will I forget the feeling inside of me when I saw Sheila walking down the aisle in her wedding dress. Absolutely the most beautiful bride any man was gifted to have been standing at the alter, waiting for her hand to be placed in his. Every moment she and I spent together was and is still a gift to me. My choice to love another will take none of that away.
Is it right for me to love again? To love someone until I leave this earth and join my Love in Heaven? Is it o.k. to give my heart, the part that Sheila does not hold, to another? Is it really better to spend the rest of my life giving pieces of myself to ladies, only to know that I will push them away if I think we are getting to close? Better to have one night stands than to truly love someone? Perhaps if it means less pain for my daughters... I am still working on this in my heart and in my head. Always, Darrel