One More Day

One More Day by Diamond Rio has to be the greatest grieving song of all time. I can't imagine a widow(er) who does not feel this song deep in his or her bones. (And by the way, let us just assume when I say widow I mean male or female unless I am proclaimer her attractive, which would then be female. Speaking of which, Lisa's blog, Nothing Good About Grief is awesome. Look for it, and she definitely qualifies as a widow in the narrower sense of the word.)

Anyway, the chorus to the song is this:

One more day; one more time.
One more sunset, maybe I'd be satisfied.
But then again, I know what it would do,
Leave me wishing still for one more day with you.

I heard this song coming home tonight. And as always, it got me thinking about what I would do with one more day with Becky.

The answer tonight startled me. But I know it is true, deep in the heart of me. I would take Becky to Katie and let them play, and I would sit ten yards away and watch them play all day. She is such an amazing little girl, so much different that 17 months ago when Becky died. And the bottom line is that I don't need one more day. I have everything to say to her, but really I have nothing to say to her. One look in each other's eyes, and we could confirm everything that we already knew, and that look would be priceless, but that is what I would want for me. The rest I want to watch her mother again. I want to see the two of them get to know each other again.

And then once Katie has been put to bed, we could have our chat on the couch, my arm around her. And I could say, "Thank you. I am so sorry that it took losing you to begin to understand the depth of my love for you. Thank you for seeing me more clearly than I have ever been seen, even by myself. And most of all, thank you for Katie."

And she would say, "I am sorry I had to leave. You are doing such an amazing job. Thank you for loving me; thank you for letting me live and ultimately die on my terms, spending as much as my energy as possible on the things most meaningfully to me."

But those are words that are ultimately not necessary. One look would confirm to us both that is what we would say. And so we would sit quietly together, the presence of the other enough. That would be my one more day, and it would leave me wishing still for one more day with her.