Don’t make me live without you

All night long on my bed
I looked for the one my heart loves;
I looked for him but did not find him.
I will get up now and go about the city,
through its streets and squares;
I will search for the one my heart loves.
So I looked for him but did not find him.
The watchmen found me
as they made their rounds in the city.
‘Have you seen the one my heart loves?’
Scarcely had I passed them
when I found the one my heart loves.
I held him and would not let him go
till I had brought him to my mother’s house,
to the room of the one who conceived me.  Song of Songs 3:1-4

I have no idea whether this young woman literally woke up and found her lover not there and then got up and wandered the streets looking for him. I can’t really relate to that.

But I can relate to that sense of longing. Waking up to that empty space beside you in the bed. Missing your partner like crazy when she/he is away for a few nights. Feeling your world light up when she/he walks in from a long day at work. That whole ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ thing. Because when you are together, you feel complete and when you are apart, you feel like a piece of you is missing.

The other day, I met someone who was telling me how she’d just found out that her husband had an inoperable tumour. Which was terribly tragic in itself. But what was also heartbreaking was the way she kept apologising for crying –

I’m so sorry. I’m not normally like this. I’m fine most of the time.

Fine? How could she be fine? She’s facing losing the love of her life. Of course, she isn’t fine. Why would she feel the need to pretend she was? Who would ever expect her to be fine?

‘The Bible Guide’ by Andrew Knowles suggests that this passage is a dream. An anxiety dream. Because when you are in love, the stakes are high. The more you love someone, the more you can’t imagine life without them.

The woman dreams that she has lost her lover. She is looking for him and can’t find him. There are ancient myths which tell stories like this, which deal with anxiety, loss and grief. At heart, they express a fear of death. But this story has a happy ending. Suddenly she finds him and all is well.

This has always fascinated me – how you can possibly find a way to carry on, to live again, when your world has fallen apart? Fascinated me enough to explore it in my novel ‘Secrets Such As These’ –

This was so sad. Rosemary did not know what to do. She had no idea how to comfort this desolate stranger. She had no more words to say. A familiar resentment sparked into flame inside her soul. How did God allow such suffering? How did such bad things happen to such good people? It simply wasn’t fair. She knew exactly how Joanna felt. She felt the same way at some point every single day. It was coming up to year ago that she had lost her husband. Lost. How she hated that word. An insubstantial word implying she had carelessly mislaid him some place. Almost a year since the prime reason for her existence had vanished from her life, then. Since the world that she had inhabited with her husband for forty-two years had fallen apart. Bill and Rosemary had never had children. It had mattered at first, but they were so in love with each other that even without a family of their own, they felt happy and complete. Bill came home for his dinner every day at twelve thirty. Rosemary felt fulfilled keeping their home immaculate and preparing Bill’s favourite meals. She loved to work in the garden, knowing the pleasure she and Bill would derive from it, as they sat companionably on the patio on sunny weekends, doing the crossword together and sharing memories of blissful holidays and significant shared experiences. She missed him so very much. In losing her soul-mate, the meaning of her life had evaporated. What did she have to get up for in the morning? What was the point of carrying on? That was why she had enquired about becoming a volunteer. She urgently needed a place to go. She desperately needed a reason to live. The company and the routine helped too. These women had not known Bill. During each shift, she could almost forget that she was alone in life. And each shift done, each day got through, was one less day to survive without her beloved Bill.

We all know people who have lost the love of their life. Well, not lost – that’s too gentle a word – had the love of their life ripped unexpectedly and cruelly from by their side. Don’t ever expect them to get over it. Don’t ever expect them to move on. They may find a way to live again, to go on, but life can never be the same again. If we have not experienced it, we do not know. We have no idea.

We can’t expect anyone to put all the pieces of their broken heart back together when some of the pieces are not even there anymore.