a paragraph I wish I wrote

I have adopted this paragraph from one written by Parker Palmer:

A few years ago, my wife died. She was more than a good woman, and the months following her death were a long, hard winter for me. But in the midst of that ice and loss, I came into a certain clarity that I lacked when she was alive. I saw something that had been concealed when the luxuriousness of her love surrounded me - saw how I had relied on her to help me cushion life's harsher blows. When she could no longer do that, my first thought was "Now I must do it for myself." But as time went on, I saw a deeper truth: it was never my wife absorbing those blows but a larger and deeper grace she taught me to rely upon. When my wife was alive, I confused the teaching with the teacher. My teacher is gone now, but the grace is still there - and my clarity about that fact has allowed her teaching to take deeper root in me. Winter clears the landscape, however brutally, giving us a chance to see ourselves and each other more clearly, to see the very ground of our being.

Yeah, that just about says it.