One Little Rock...

Today was a beautiful day filled with sunshine and the smell of Spring all wrapped around the warmth. I took advantage of the sunshine and went fishing. I live less than a mile from a beautiful Park and 2 huge lakes. I had not been fishing since late last Fall. I did not do any Ice Fishing this year as it simply gets harder to drag my warm Butt out in the cold and on to the ice every year. Needless to say... I was READY! The weather was perfect and the water looked ready to be fished.
I tried different places and the fishing definitely was not anything to write home about. As I stood at the shore, watching my bobber float, untouched, I glanced down at where my foot was resting. A slow, gentle rush, if in fact a rush can be slow, came over me. Tears welled up in my eyes as I looked out over the water, it's white caps dancing to the beat of the wind skirting across the water. The rock where I rested my foot was all too familiar. It was a place, a thing that I will remember all of my life.
The last three years of My Sheila's life, she spent in a wheelchair. Her legs were good for a very tiny support when I would lift Sheila from chair to bed or chair to toilet or where-ever it was I was lifting her precious body to. The wheelchair was not a newly added article to our lives. Sheila had been in one off and on through out or 24 years together. Many reasons for her being in one, the last, a simple medical procedure gone wrong that left her unable to walk ever again. This "inconvenience" as she called it did not ever hamper nor stop our living. We simply found other ways to do things. There was always a way.
Fishing had always been one of the many passions we shared as one. Sheila normally out-fished the rest of us and loved to fish anytime we could go. She had her favorite spot, reason one, because the fishing was awesome in that spot. Reason two, and the reason I cried today, was because there was a rock that stuck out of the ground right at the shores edge. I would push her there and then she would rest her legs against the rock. For hours she would sit there and look out over the water... that was of course when she wasn't catching a fish. I would watch her and Marvel at the endurance she displayed and the way she never let her "inconvenience" slow her down. She refused to allow anything to come between her life and our love. Her foot would stayed propped up on the rock I was now standing on. My heart ached for her and my soul poured out it's tears for the knowing that I was NOT going to see her again until I looked at her, face to face in heaven.
But the tears I cried today were not so strongly for all the years we lived with the wheelchair. They were not for just the memory of her. They were for a more specific time. These tears I cried at the Lake today were for the last hours we had together. They were for the time that followed the Doctor telling me words I never spend another day with her at this lake. That he could not save her and that she had hours to live. I cried for words unspoken that I have wanted just one hour of that time back so I could say them to her. I was so scared and tried so hard not to let her know she was going to heaven. I talked of stupid things like the snow outside and told her she needed to just rest and go to sleep.
Why didn't I tell her the things in my heart that night? Why didn't I tell her I had loved her with all of my heart and soul forever and that I would until the day I died? Why didn't I tell her how the years we loved one another were the best years i would ever know. That she was my world and that no man could have ever been more blessed with a love than I was. The tears that stream down my face now as I write, causing me to be so glad You, the reader, will only see the finished product here, and not all the erases and corrections that typing through tear filled eyes makes happen, burn into my cheek. So much I wanted to say! So many things I should have said to her as she laid there looking up at me. I wanted to crawl in next to her and hold her one more time. Why didn't I?
I stared down at that rock and then out at the water. I cried her name and told her how much i loved her. I said the things that I wished I had said to her that last few hours we were given together. I apologized for the pain i caused her when I hurt her heart and told her how sorry I was for not being a stronger, a better man. And I whispered to the wind that I missed her more than I ever knew a person could be missed. I sang her favorite song to her and cried when I sang "and Honey, I miss you, and I am being good... and I would love to be with you, if only I could."
One little rock, sticking out of the ground. One spot out of 10,000 acres of land that surround a Lake. One million memories sit in that rock. The very best times of my life. The memories of my daughters and I, captured in a single rock, on the shore of a lake. Do you think she heard me today? Do you think that she always Knew???? I hope she did. She is my happiest memories and my hardest cries. And I love her forever. That little rock gave her back to me for just a little while today and I was blessed all over again...